Word: druten
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...Druid Circle (by John van Druten; produced by Alfred de Liagre Jr.) deals with life-or rather the awful lack of it-in a wormy provincial British university "near the borders of England and Wales." The leading spirits there are all husks and cinders, all genteel pedants dead from the neck down. Worst of all is 53-year-old Professor White (beautifully played by Leo G. Carroll), whose thin blood has turned to bile, and who hates youth pathologically, not just as something that has vanished, but as something that never came...
...first appears-all the difference between the stuff of satire and the stuff of drama. With fluttering spinsters and tea-table gossip constantly cutting in on the professor's story, The Druid Circle seems too intense at moments, yet not intense enough as a whole. Playwright van Druten, who as a young man taught for a time at the sort of college he portrays, has perhaps put his imagination in bondage to his memories...
...John van Druten had his first stage success (Young Woodley, 1925) when he was 24. Since then, he has rarely been without a hit-if not in London, then in New York. His biggest: There's Always Juliet (1931), Old Acquaintance (1940), and The Voice of the Turtle...
...Voice of the Turtle" was a love story, a good simple play; "The Mermaids Sing" was a love story with complications; but in his newest achievement, John Van Druten has allowed the complications to overpower the story, and the result is not a good play. He is still just as good a technician as ever, and "The Druid Circle" moves forward with an oiled speed that is sure to keep you awake and lively for the full two and a half hours. Though threadss are dropped aimlessly all over the last two acts, they are line, colored, interesting threads, spun...
...Druten's first mistake was in trying to write a problem play. His most successful theme, romance, is subordinated to the handy role of a device to keep things moving, while the problem, modern education, pops in and out of the play, and is never resolved or even treated in concrete dramatic terms. Through the irrelevancies and the scenes of simpering young love, the main theme had difficulty holding its own. An aging professor, envious of the love shared by two of his students, tries desperately to come by it vicariously, gloats over one of their captured love letters...