Word: nazimova
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When Alia Nazimova revived Ghosts on Broadway last week Reviewer Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times, in line with the current critical tendency to regard the plays of Henrik Ibsen as dated, called the drama "only a temperate statement of an ugly thought with a milk-&-gruel attack upon authority and pious idealism." Nevertheless, nobody but Eugene Brieux has since staged the tragedy of venereal inheritance so terribly as Ibsen. As for timeliness, the final "mercy murder" in Ghosts might have been cribbed from last month's front pages (TIME, Nov. 18 et seq.). At any rate...
...abused widow of a man who not only betrayed her but also infected her son Oswald, Mme Nazimova, now 56, manages to convey every shade of pride, courage and despair, by her trick of singing rather than speaking her lines, by the manifold gestures of her hands and even of her back. Her supporting cast-McKay Morris, Harry Ellerbe and pretty Ona Munson, fresh from musicomedy-seems to have caught fire itself from the sparks of her genius...
Madame Alla Nazimova is as much concerned with the progress of her acting as the young amateur. Learning that we had seen the performance of the night before as well as that night's, she asked us which one we considered, the better. We finally remarked, after a natural hesitation, on the tenseness which we had noticed even more that evening. (In fact, the air seemed to vibrate with the suppressed emotion.) Nazimova also considered the performance that night of Ibsen's "Ghosts" more polished, for as she explained, there had been a rehearsal, she assured us, was much more...
Recollecting her early passion for the violin, we asked if she still played much and then let our eyes stray around the room, half expecting to see a violin case sticking out somewhere. But Nazimova cut our musing short. "I haven't played for many years; I don't enjoy the playing of a woman. The tone is usually too weak. I love the virile stroking of a man's bow," and her eyes flashed...
...Nazimova's knowledge of Ibsen is very great. To her, his plays are of just as much force now as ever, "There is still a great deal of hypocrisy in the world," she said. "I do not lie, for it does me no good, but merely confuses me. I lied like all children, but when I got older, I saw the worthlessness of lying. People hide their thoughts today just as in "Ghosts" because of a sense of duty and false pride. Ibsen saw this miserable state and shocked people with his writings, but the mistakes of a half century...