MILLAY’S ARIA DA CAPO

I read Edna St.Vincent Millay’s (1892-1950) play Aria da Capo (1919) when I was a freshman in high school.  It was love at first reading since it was very theatrical and I adored the role of Columbine.  It never crossed my mind that this play had any relationship to Millay’s vision of the world after World War One. 

Aria da Capo was written two years after Millay graduated from Vassar College. She and her sister Norma (1894-1986) joined the Provincetown Players as actors during the 1917-18 season. The following season this group moved to a new theatre and named it The Provincetown Playhouse. It was during the 1919-20 season when Millay directed her new play Aria da Capo and her sister played the role of Columbine.

Aria da Capo is a play within a play, thus it has two separate plots. The opening segment is a harlequinade that had its origin in the Italian commedia dell’arte. When the curtain rises Pierrot and Columbine, the lovers, are seated at a long table which is parallel to the footlights. The table is covered with a gaily printed black and white cloth on which is set enough dishes to represent a banquet.  The two characters sit at opposite ends of the table on thin legged chairs with high backs. Pierrot is dressed in his traditional costume except that it is lilac color. Columbine is in her traditional garb except that it is pink. Their conversation covers a range of topics and it is led by Pierrot who is constantly referring to the edgier modernist movements of the day. Cothurnus, the Masque of Tragedy, interrupts their scene since he needs to rehearse his play.

Norma Millay    Harrison Dowd

Rehearsal of Play without sets or costumes

Once the lovers leave the stage, Cothurnus, his name represents the name of the boot worn by actors in ancient Greek tragedies, starts a new play with the two shepherds, Thyrsis and Corydon. The shepherds eventually start their pastoral playlet, but soon get bored and agree to play a new game of their own invention.  They divide the acting area in half with crepe paper ribbons and begin what becomes a game of war over ownership. The play ends after the death of both characters and Cothurnus leaves the stage. Pierrot and Columbine return to the stage and are upset that their set has been rearranged.  They see two dead bodies under their table and want Cothurnus to take the bodies off the stage.  He refuses so Pierrot covers them with the table cloth so the audience cannot see them.  Pierrot and Columbine begin their dialogue repeating the first sentences of the play.

This outline of the action does not begin to reveal the witty language, the sense of disillusionment that the game of war creates and the attitude of quickly forgetting the tragic events. This play embraces many feelings that were prevalent in the aftermath of the World War One. 

This play must be experienced by a reader, or better yet, by an audience member in order to appreciate the play’s nonrealistic style, its blank verse, and its dynamic juxtaposition of speech that creates tragic humor. This latter element results from the fusion of farce and tragedy. The style of this play was a novelty in America when it was first presented since realism was still the dominant genre.

Aria da Capo, the play’s title, is a reworked version of the name of a musical form from the Baroque period—seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century. The da capo aria was performed by singers who were often accompanied by either several instruments or a small orchestra. This type of composition is divided into three sections. The first section presents a complete piece. The second section is in contrast to the first piece in mood, texture and tempo. The third section repeats the first section from the beginning. Millay utilized the structural elements of this musical form for her play and since the da capo aria’s songs were typically in verse, she followed that element of style as well. 

    

Aria da Capo opened December 5, 1919 as one of three one-act plays produced by the Provincetown Players at their New York City Playhouse. Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943), a fastidious critic for the New York Times, considered this play the “mainstay” of the evening. Woollcott’s December 14 1919 review titled “Second Thoughts on First Nights.” He told his readers: “you should see this bitterly ironic little fantasy by Edna St. Vincent Millay.... This is the most beautiful and most interesting play in English language now to be seen in New York.” Aria da Capo

gained the reputation as one of the United States finest verse plays.

Woollcott’s comments appear to have resonated across the nation and Aria da Capo became an extremely popular one-act play produced regularly by community theatres and colleges through the 1970s.  After its first fifty years, it continued to be sporadically produced throughout the rest of the century. There have been more than 650 stage productions of this play during its first seventy years.

The New York Times on May 20, 1962 announced that Aria da Capo was to be presented as a television program that evening. Nearly twenty years later Larry Alan Smith (1955-    ) set this play to music.  The new opera was premiered in Chicago on June 11, 1980 and it received praise. A review by Tim Page that appeared in the New York Times on February 12, 1986 considers this work an opera even though there are no real arias. Page praised this work and it has gained recognition worldwide and continues to be performed.

Aria da Capo was published as a book in 1920 by Harper & Brothers: New York and London. Since this publication, the play has frequently been published in collections of one-act plays.  Aria da Capo has been translated into numerous languages and distributed worldwide. The script is readily available both on-line and in one-act play collections.

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote several more plays after Aria da Capo, but she is most remembered for her distinguished work as a poet. In 1923 she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

NOTE:
Photo from Women Writers of the Provincetown Players. Judith E. Barlow. State University of New York Press. Albany: New York, 2009.

THE GREEN GODDESS ON STAGE AND SCREEN

Since William Archer was an advocate for the New Drama--realistic social drama and drama of ideas, a highbrow theatre critic and the English translator of Henrik Ibsen’s plays, no one ever expected him to write an adventure driven lowbrow melodrama.  

Archer entrusted the script of his new play “The Raja of Rukh” to Granville-Barker (1877-1946) a well-known man of the theatre in Britain, who was travelling to America. Granville-Barker presented the play to Winthrop Ames, a Broadway producer, who agreed to present this play in the States.  Archer visited New York in late July of 1920, while an actor was being sought to play the part of the Raja. This was a difficult role to cast and the success of the production would rest on the shoulders of the selected actor.  Archer returned to America in November to attend rehearsals and see the late December trial run of his play, retitled The Green Goddess, at Philadelphia’s famous Walnut Street Theatre.  

Ames had cast George Arliss, age fifty-three years, as the Raja.  Arliss was born in London, but he had spent the past eighteen years acting in America.  He was a prominent actor on Broadway, but he was not a star.  The character of the Raja was not the typical Broadway leading role. This character neither wins the affection of the heroine nor does he reform his beliefs and alter his unacceptable behavioral pattern. Arliss with his British accent and slightly disproportional physical attributes, large head on a slight body, presented a convincing image for this character.

The trial run of the play in Philadelphia was extremely successful.  The performances of George Arliss and Ivan Simpson, who played Watkins the Raja’s cockney valet, were credited with making this production extremely entertaining. It was a perception that would be echoed throughout the long run of the play.

The Green Goddess opened at the Booth Theatre in Manhattan on January 18, 1921.  The Booth, located just off Broadway, was a small theatre with about 760 seats.  Following opening night, the play sold out until the end of March.  It received excellent reviews and the New York Times had dubbed it as “a thriller that really thrills.” It was also talked about everywhere society people gathered. They loved the lavish sets, exotic decorative pieces like the Green Goddess shrine and the fabulous costumes. 

The review on January 19, 1921 that appeared in the New York Times was written by the sardonic Alexander Woollcott who lauded the play, the producer, the playwright and the leading actors, especially George Arliss.  “Mr. Archer has built his play fairly well and written it smoothly and then had the immense good fortune to fall into the hands of Mr. Ames, . . .”  Woollcott labeled The Green Goddess as unmistakably good entertainment.  He also mentions that this is a perfect vehicle for George Arliss and it is likely “to trundle him” far.  This was a prediction that proved to come true since Arliss gained stardom in the role of the Raja.

The Green Goddess played at the Booth Theatre for fourteen months where it was presented 415 times during its run. The production then moved to Boston for eleven weeks and ninety performances.  In the Fall, it moved to Chicago for sixty-five performances.  It was estimated in the Indianapolis Star on December 24, 1922 that when this play’s “two year cycle is completed, ‘The Green Goddess’ will have been acted 625 times in the United States.”  The article further speculates: “it is estimated that Archer’s drama will be acted at least 1,000 times before Mr. Ames seeks its successor for Mr. Arliss.” 

On September 6, 1923 George Arliss returned to London, England after twenty-two years in America to play the Raja in The Green Goddess. The play was presented at the Saint James Theatre and the play as well as its star received an ovation. The rest of the cast members from the American production were not in the London presentation. The play was a sensation in London.  The star of the production was one attraction, but the playwright was the other. Archer had served for decades as London’s scowling critic of lowbrow theatre and now he was the playwright of a delightful lowbrow melodrama.

George Arliss also managed the time to play the Raja in the first film version of The Green Goddess released on August 14, 1923. This is a silent black and white film made by Distinctive Productions. In January of 1925, the British advertisements for this film proclaimed it was “One of the strongest melodramas ever presented on the screen.”

A second film version was released in the United States on February 13, 1930. William Archer never had the opportunity to enjoy the continuing success of his play and this film since he died on December 27, 1924.  This new film starred Arliss and included Ivan Simpson, who continued to play the Raja’s valet. This version was the first of the all-talking Vitaphone pictures for Warner Brothers.  

The Green Goddess was a sensation in the English speaking theatre both as a play and a film. It also was published as a book and presented in newspapers as a serial presentation.  The Altoona Tribune announced on February 26, 1930 that the first installment of The Green Goddess would be published the next day. The play continued to have a life with touring companies in both the United States and England well into the 1930s.  The BBC presented the play in 1932 on the radio where it was billed as “a thriller”.  It was a thriller that showed how the newer weapons of war changed the game, how the world was quickly changing after World War One and how readily wars can start.