THE PRISONERS OF WAR

J. R. Ackerley (1896-1967) wrote a play that incorporated some of his World War One experiences as an officer in the British army while being held as a Prisoner of War by Germany. The German and British governments reached an agreement in 1916 allowing a limited number of wounded and disabled British officers and soldiers to be transferred from German prison camps to isolated locations in neutral Switzerland.  These men remained prisoners of war during their time in Switzerland and they were subject to being returned to the country that captured them. J. R. Ackerley was wounded May, 1917 and was captured by the Germans. He was sent in December, 1917 to Murren, Switzerland for part of his time as a prisoner of war where he was housed in one of the town’s nine ski resort hotels.

Ackerley started writing The Prisoners of War while he was in Murren.  He completed a first draft of the play while still a POW. There are a number of similarities in the details of the play that related to actual persons and incidents that Ackerley encountered during his nineteen months in the Alpine hotel prison. 

The Prisoners of War, a play in three acts, takes place in Captain Conrad’s sitting-room in a Hotel in Murren during the summer of 1918. The room description as well as the view out the windows at the back of the room are very detailed.  Ackerley is also specific about the details of time, dates and character descriptions. 

Act One takes place on July 20, 1918. Second-Lieutenant Allan Grayle, a nineteen years old observer in the R.A.F, brings two friends into Captain Conrad’s sitting room. Conrad is not present at the time. Until recently Grayle was Conrad’s suite-mate, but Conrad permits him to continue having access to the sitting-room. Peter Parker in his 1989 biography titled A Life of J. R. Ackerley, mentions that Conrad is “clearly based upon Ackerley himself.”  The first act promotes an understanding of the boredom, homesickness and sexual desires that frequently attracted the younger men to each other.  It illustrates the tensions felt by five British POWs while it begins to focus on the relationship between Conrad and Grayle,  The callow Grayle is heterosexual, but clearly knows how to used Conrad’s affection to get the small perks he desires. 

 

Act Two takes place on July 22^nd at half-past three in the afternoon. This act illustrates the mental changes that each man in the group is undergoing. They are removed from the world and their individual visions for a future are fading.

Act Three begins at nine P.M. on the night of July 30^th, a dance in the hotel was arranged as a recreational activity for the men. This feeble event comes at the end of a difficult day. Lieutenant Adelby, the oldest prisoner in the group, learned he was not allowed to return to England to see his dying wife. He commits suicide after learning of her death. Conrad’s weakening mental health collapses.  The future is unclear and the remaining three men find their stability crumbling.  While this plot recount makes the play appear to be gloomy since the facts are dark, there are many illuminating factors in the work that hold the attention and provide the viewer with much to consider.

The Three Hundred Club, an independent theatre group who produced new plays on Sundays in theatres run by other companies, presented the premier of The Prisoners of War at London’s Court Theatre in early July, 1925. The play was praised in the London Times on July 8, 1925. It was considered a “distinguished play” and the positive response inspired Nigel Playfair (1874-1934) to move the Three Hundred Club’s production to the Playhouse Theatre at Charing Cross. Playfair withdrew the play on September 19, 1925 after twenty-four performances. The reviews called the play “an unforgettable masterpiece.” –Graphic; “Certainly the most remarkable play that has been produced this year”—Morning Post and “Mr. J.R. Ackerley’s vivid study cheered at the Playhouse”—Daily Sketch.  The favorable reviews failed to generate good attendance.

Following the London closing of The Prisoners of War, there were other productions staged throughout England. This play was not seen again in London until January 1939, when a new production was staged at the Tavistock Little Theatre by Raymond Raikes (1910-1998). This theatre was one of the most significant of London’s minor theatre organizations. A play ran for four performances and it was either an accepted classic or a new play. 

 

Prisoners of War was produced in New York a decade after its London premier. It opened at the Ritz Theatre on January 28, 1935. It was produced and staged by Frank Merlin (1893-1968).  The production ran for eight performances. Brooks Atkinson (1894-1984) reviewed the production in the New York Times on January 29, 1935. He believed “the essential defect of Prisoners of War is the product chiefly of time. Such themes need deeper clarification today.”

The play was not appreciated in New York and Arthur Pollock, the theatre critic for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle mentions in his review that “the relations between the soldiers was, to say the very least, strange.” I assume that Frank Merlin removed all the homosexual references to avoid problems with being closed by the Hayes Code that was adopted in the early 1930s.  This type of alteration would weaken the play considerable.

The Prisoners of War was revived in London several times during the second half of the twentieth century.  There was a 1955 production at the small Irving Theatre opening on September 29, 1955. Another revival was staged in February, 1993 at the New End Theatre.

The play was first published March 26, 1925 by Chatto & Windus, London. A second edition was released in June, 1927. I have read that the book version was popular and several more editions were released.  In 1988, The Prisoners of War was included in Gay Plays: Volume Three edited by Michael Wilcox.  This volume was published in 1988 by Methuen.

J.R. Ackerley had a very successful career following the staging and publication of this play.  He served for twenty-four years as literary editor of the BBC’s weekly magazine the Listener. In 1956 he wrote a novel followed in the 1960s by several popular nonfiction books.

Reference for photo:
    Peter Parker, Ackerley: A Life of J.R. Ackerley (London: Constable, 1989) between pages 114
     and 115.  

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.

G.B. SHAW’S O’FLAHERTY V.C.

 VICTORIA CROSS:

A British naval and military decoration instituted by royal warrant and bestowed for "Conspicuous bravery or devotion" to the country in the presence of the enemy.

When George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) wrote O’Flaherty V.C. for Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 1915, he already had an international reputation as a playwright.  O’Flaherty V.C. is a one-act comedy that Shaw subtitled “A Recruiting Pamphlet.”  The play was written shortly after Michael O’Leary became the first Irish soldier to be decorated with the Victoria Cross. Lieutenant O’Leary had killed eight German soldiers and thereby stopped the assaults from two German barricades. Shaw denied that he was inspired by the real-life soldier, but the newspaper reporters continued to press the comparison.

After being decorated with the Victoria Cross, Shaw’s character, Private Dennis O’Flaherty returned to his village in Ireland to see his mother. She is to meet him at the Irish country home of General Sir Pearce Madigan. It is the summer of 1915. The first half of the play is the discussion between Sir Pearce and O’Flaherty.  The young soldier shares his candid thoughts with his estate master, who is also his general. Mrs. O’Flaherty, an ardent Irish nationalist, arrives and is angry that her son is a soldier in the English army since he told her he was going to fight for the French and the Russians. She is also irate that her son had shaken hands with the King of England. Following a set-to with Teresa, the General’s parlor maid and O’Flaherty’s girlfriend, Mrs. O’Flaherty enters the General’s house to have tea. Both military men agree that life is quieter at the front.

Shaw believed he was writing a play that would help the British recruitments in Ireland that were below the needed number. Part of the problem was that the Irish Nationalists were not interested in assisting England’s World War One efforts. Shaw hoped his comedy might provide humorous insights into the grievances that the Irish held against the British and win over his Abbey Theatre audiences for recruiting purposes.

  

O’Flaherty V.C. was not produced during the fall of 1915 at the Abbey Theatre as had been planned.  The government of Great Britain intervened through its Dublin Castle administration. There were many newspapers across Great Britain that carried the notice in mid-November 1915, claiming that the play had been suppressed by the Censor. By November 17^th other newspapers carried the story that St. John Ervine (1883-1971), the manager of the Abbey Theatre and a playwright, claimed there was “no foundation for the play having been withdrawn.” He stated in the London Daily Mirror on November 17, 1915 that O’Flaherty V.C. had “only been postponed and the military authorities have not interfered in the matter.”  Shaw also denied in the press that his play had not been suppressed by the authorities. So there was no single explanation made to the public about the change of plans.

The Abbey Theatre never presented O’Flaherty V.C. and the play was not produced until 1917. It is noted in Bernard Shaw Selected One Act Plays published in 1965 by Penguin Books that this satire was “first performed by Robert Loraine for the British Expeditionary Force in 1917.”  Robert Loraine (1876-1935) was a successful London actor and friend of Shaw’s.  He was also a pioneer aviator who in 1917 was serving in the Royal Flying Corps on the Western Front while stationed at Treizeenes in Belgium. He had created a dramatic society in his squadron and it was this group who premiered Shaw’s play on February 21, 1917.  It was also in 1917 that Hearst’s Magazine published the script of O’Flaherty V.C.

In 1915 a “rough proofed--unpublished” copy of O’Flaherty V.C. was printed by R.R. Clark in Edinburgh. This proof was never released for publication, but it did find its way into a few libraries. The official publication of O’Flaherty V.C. occurred in 1919. It has also been published in collections of George Bernard Shaw’s plays during the twentieth century.

In 1920, Shaw wrote a letter to the Managing Director of the new Celtic Players.  He offered this group, located in the United States, the opportunity to stage the first professional theatre production of O’Flaherty V.C.  This acting company, changed its name to The Irish Players, and opened its season in June, 1920. The Irish Players staged their production at the Thirty-ninth Street Theatre in New York City, with Shaw’s play on the bill. Newspapers across the United States carried stories about this production. The Cincinnati Enquirer carried a special “Correspondence of the Enquirer” story dated New York, June 30, 1920.  There is one sentence in this piece that sums-up my feeling for this play: “O’Flaherty is a real broth of an Irish lad, inspired with some of the keenest wit of the author of his being.”

The first production of O’Flaherty V.C. in England was produced by the Stage Society at the Lyric Theatre on December 19, 1920. This was a theatre society with limited membership which mounted private Sunday performances of new and experimental plays.  The group frequently presented the first English performance of plays that had been banned for public performance by a government authority. This performance was not open to the general public.

The play finally received its largest audience in 1924 when Shaw was invited by the British Broadcasting Company to read the play for a radio audience. The radio broadcast took place on November 20, 1924 and it was sent to every radio station on the network except the one in Belfast. The BBC estimated that this program reached an audience of three million listeners. This was the BBC’s first venture into broadcasting a play and it was Shaw’s first attempt at doing one of his own dramas. There were many positive reviews and some negative ones, but the BBC was encouraged to begin regularly broadcasting plays to its large audience.

This play is a gem and it has a long history of professional and amateur productions throughout the United Kingdom and North America. The play still has the power to capture an audience’s delight. The most recent production of O’Flaherty V.C., that I have seen mentioned in a review, was staged on March 7, 2007 by the Washington Stage Guild. 

NOTE: If you are interested in reading more information about the reasons the Abbey Theatre cancelled its production of O’Flaherty V.C., there is an in-depth article on PROJECT MUSE http://muse.jhu.edu titled “The Censorship of O’Flaherty V.C”.  The author is Dr. Lauren Arrington.

Source for Image: 

George J. Hagar The Standard American Encyclopedia (New York: University Society Inc., 1916) 12:Victoria Cross