Word: vapid
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When Basil Dean suggested that the theatre in England was in a less vigorous position than the American he had probably seen "The Young Person in Pink", For Gertrude Jennings' play, now in its first week at the Copley, is certainly insipid, if not devitalizingly vapid. Three acts of gentle farce, it rests its right to existence on a pink dress, a skit in the best Hyde Park cockney, and--at least in America--on Alan Mowbray's smile. To say, "The smile's the play," is not to vaporize. It is the truth. And all the more surprising...
...metaphysics have sent Sutton Vane's play into the limbo of provincial stock productions. So his philosophy of rat trap existence, a philosophy which saw nothing in heaven or hell but the doubtful happiness of "carrying on"--and "There's no discharge in the war," now suffers the vapid appreciation of stock audiences. And the Copley crosses the Styx...
...emotions. He forget that even the most characterless youths have shibboleths to break, ideals to leave behind new paths of iniquity to enter upon with misgiving. Dreiser forgot the psychological and biological metamorphoses of youth; he failed to recall the kaleidoscopic fluctuations even of adolescence. And hence his vapid characterless lad assumed thanks to his consistent characterlessness, a firmness of character quite unbelievable. He is as paradoxically impossible a specimen as it is possible to have...
...with the growing tendency to use vapid syndicated material, their news columns have also degenerated in to stagnancy. In truth there can be no doubt that the decline of their press is largely responsible for the present apathy of the rural electorate...
...enjoyable, his soul yearns for something more aristocratic. This thirst after coronets has been the cause of Mr. Michael Ariens present prosperity. And, for that matter, he did well enough with imaginary peers and Honorables; but the real inside story of genuine dukes and prime ministers leaves such vapid tales absolutely nowhere. Even the "gentleman with a duster" and Margot Asquith have not sated the public's taste for what the Duke of Devonshire said when his hounds caught distemper...