Work Of Washington State Theater Group Wins Acclaim Of Audience

The group of actors representing the Washington State Theater project last night at the high school auditorium, appearing here under the auspices of the local branch of the A.A.U.W., gave an authentically interesting interpretation of Oliver Goldsmith’s classic comedy, “She Stoops to Conquer.”

With artistic settings and colorful costumes depicting styles picturesque and also grotesque, the actors were pleasing in appearance.

To those accustomed to and contented with the modern tempo of the stage and screen, with their snappy lines of keen wit, the humor of this play seems cumbersome, indeed. But such was the craft of the earlier plays.

Scribe freed the old plays of the lengthy discourses, the explanatory asides. He was the first journalist among modern playwrights. He had “infinite technical tact.” It was Scribe who “made security the guiding motive of his serious plays, realizing that the basis of middle class law is security. The pattern of his dramas was logical and adroit based upon a knowledge of human nature and the limitations and resources of stage art. It was economical of means, crisp and graceful of address, and ninety per cent sure-fire. He put on the stage real human beings and not reciting lay figures. He performed an important service in clarifying dramatic construction, eliminating sentimentality and transferring the interest from the spoken word to the character and to the event that lies behind that word.”

Goldsmith’s play as done by the Washington State Theater group was interesting from the standpoint of the history of the drama, and was a scholarly version of the early type of histrionics.

This story was published in the March 18, 1938, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.