CRIMSON PLAYGOER

The Theater Guild's production of "Porgy" returns to the Hollis, after a year, with no loss in its striking effectiveness. It is a folk play, but without the easy movement of plot which that expression might imply; local color, to be sure, is there, but woven with skill into the fabric of a tremendously swiftmoving drama; and, moreover, the folk atmosphere is not mere adornment, but has a vital part in the development of the plot. A red-coated orphanage band leading the inhabitants of Catfish Row on a picnic; a quack lawyer in a top hat, selling Porgy a divorce from Bess for a dollar and a half; the marvelous scenes of a score of bodies swaying in rhythm as they chant for the dead; these are local color of the highest grade, but they are also integral parts of the play.

Music is brilliantly employed in "Porgy." Not only are there the organized funeral chants, and, at the other end of the scale, the futuristic rhythms of the band, but there is Porgy's sudden turn from prose recitation into a chant as he speaks early in the play, and Serena's prayer for the delirious Bess to Jesus, to "send the devil out of her like you used to do," with the rising refrain of "time and time again!" in which the others gradually join.

The staging does not lag behind the music in effectiveness. There are only three changes of scene, but the varying lights and groupings make all three powerful, especially the few minutes after the picnic, in a heavy, blue-green palmetto jungle, when the exile Crown meets his erst while woman Bess and keeps her until it is too late for her to return to Porgy.

The acting is uniformly good: the temptation to overdo almost never prevails. Frank Wilson as Porgy and Evelyn Ellis as Bess are perhaps outstanding, and the whole cast has sufficient vigor to carry the audience through even the slow first-night scene changing. But that technical matter was a very minor drag on the otherwise complete appeal of the play.