Editor's Note: We just couldn't get the bally old feature page out for just lots of reasons,
and so we're printing a few notes in this column on the drama in Chicago, by Tiger Van Deusen and Miss Iris Goodman.
I went to the Cube the other night.
I went with the intention of killing an otherwise dull evening.
I saw an actor.
The tale is therefore told. Further elaboration would be absurd -- but -- after all,
there's a devil of a lot of space yet to fill.
There is a negro, Charles Gilpin by name, who has given to the American stage some of the
greatest presentations of the playwright's art ever seen. Gilpin, as O'Neil's "Emperor
Jones" was unforgetable. There were gaucheries of course, Clark has not yet had the
experience to present the finished, polished work of Gilpin or Robeson. Isaac Clark of
the University college is an actor, in time he will be a great actor. Kismet.
The Cube is esconced neatly if not comfortably in a small store building at 1538 East 57th Street.
The Cube I gather is an embryonic art center. If so, it conceals it well. The walls are a trifle
flaky and the entire mess is covered with a splotchy job of black paint. Pictures are hung all
over. I suppose some of them are good. Various people went out of their way to assure me that
such was the case. I am no critic Coles Philips being the zenith of my artistic yearnings
but some of the display was admired volubly by myself. The main attraction of the Cube before the
plays open is a huge phonograph. A lovely phonograph. A passionate phonograph. A phonograph
among phonographs. It chortles the St. Louis Blues. I like the St. Louis Blues.
There were three other plays besides "The Dreamy Kid." They were good in their way, the
Little Theatre way, but they paled into insignificance beside the bit of O'Neillism that
Clark made almost a masterpiece. The supporting cast was excellent the best portrayal being
that of a lady of light morals whose name escapes me. She swept on the stage like a lambent dame and, in
the vernacular, he hogged it until Clark's cue stopped the show. A play by a negro cast is always
pure emotion but beautifully expressed. I would give a lot to see Isaac Clark work on
a properly equipped stage. Someday I will and until then I shall carry this clipping and
exalt him to every other theatre hound I meet. I don't like to wax eulogistic but damnit,
the boy's good!