select the first play of the season, and above all the first
program of a Theater. This was a privateolormance. In 1S25
The Call of Life was put on by the Actors' Theater at the Comedy
Theater. In the cast was Eva Le Gallienne who five years later
produced The Green Cockatoo. (1) The play was fated as "one of
the playe of the season most worth seeing." (2) The reviewer
whose opinion we have just lnoted thought also, "the first act
is by far the best because it is simplest and most clear cut.
After the girl goes to her lower the play grows lessbringing
as a picture of real life; but the genuineness of the émotion is
always clear and interestingly evident. In 1928 the America
Laboratory Theater presented The Bridal Vell. Robert Littell
called this production "pantomine at its best" (3), adding that
very
"it is one of the most competent and impginative item in
rem Vrk theatricaI wcason and is one of those things
that ought not to be missed.
10. Retrospect
If we pause for a brief retrospect we find that Schnitzler
was suadually but steadily evening for himself a stronghold in
the United States. His one-act playe met with the highest ap¬
proval. It is his one-act playe that built up his Keputation
utside of Europe but that is only one more proof of their ex-
cellence.oritics usually agree that a real test of an author's
ablety lies in whether or not his works adpeal not only to the
comparorsively small group of people living in hisürative city or
country, but also to people in foreign lands. If we are to use
this criterion in determining Schnitzler's field of most success-
ful activity up to 1918 it would be the realm of the one-act play.
1. ) See page 11.
2.) The Nation. Oct. 28, 1925, CXXI, no. 3147.
3.) New York Evening Post. Feb. 13, 1928.