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It is the predicament of the condemned—of men waiting for the electric chair. The first act is an agonizing crescendo leading to an execution. The murderer is given a lavish meal which he cannot eat, cigarets which he is unable to finish. His temples are shaved for one electrical contact ; his trousers are slit for another. The sacrament is administered. He passes each of the other six cells in the Death House on his way to a green door. The other six of the doomed wait in silence until the lights go dim, indicating that the prison dynamo is working at its peak. In the next two acts rebellion occurs. While machine guns clatter and sirens whine outside, the most desperate of the rebels threatens to shoot hostages in cold blood if means of escape are not granted. They are not, and he kills an assistant warder, and a turnkey. A lull comes at nightfall while a searchlight sweeps the grated windows; there are three rebels left and only two bullets. Hope has long since gone. Even the shooting of the warden had been an act not so much of hope as of protest against a life in which such a steely, stifling enigma as the Death House could exist. Ultimately one of the survivors walks out to death by machine gun, leaving the others to divide the remaining cartridges.
The Last Mile is written by John Wexley. onetime actor with Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre, now playing the locksmith in Leo Bulgakov's revival of Maxim Gorki's At the Bottom, familiarly known as The Lower Depths (TIME, Jan. 20). It is said that his play follows the outline of actual events which took place in Colorado, that he has utilized Death House dialog as transcribed by an inmate. The play is performed by a cast of 16 men. It is an experience for those who can stomach it.
Joseph. The Biblical Joseph was an earnest and moral slave who repulsed the advances of the wife of his master Potiphar, because he was grateful for Potiphar's kindness and wanted no illicit fun in the first place. Joseph's nobility suffers in the theatrical version of him conceived by Playwright Bertram Bloch and performed by George Jessel. They make it quite clear that he balked at adultery not because of lofty scruples, but because he was afraid Neris would ultimately fling him to the crocodiles, her customary farewell to outworn lovers. Actor Jessel, swarthy, expressive young Hebrew, makes Joseph as glib, crafty and loquacious as a Jewish press agent, driving bargains which Potiphar, played by the splendidly silly Ferdinand Gottschalk, is too stupid to see, digging irrigation ditches because he does not believe in the pluvial generosity of the Egyptian gods, and finally escaping execution by persuading his gaoler that the gaol can be made to pay. Actor Jessel has hitherto been vaudevillian in his tendencies; now he shows himself as a player both subtle and adroit. In conjunction with Playwright Bloch's originality and George S. Kaufman's shrewd direction, this results in one of the season's more amusing pieces.