Blasphemous Play

Sophisticates of smart Berlin and worldly Hamburg have witnessed and applauded, during the past month, a modernist farce in which an actor programmed as God waddles upon the stage in plus fours, shakes cocktails for his cackling crony St. Peter, and holds hands upon a sofa with Mary Magdalene.

Naturally such a play is not for rustics or provincial cityites. Last week the Author-Producer, famed Walter Hasenclever, made the questionable move of taking his farce, Marriages Are Made in Heaven, away from the great German metropoli and out to Frankfurt-am-Main. There good and pious Frankfurters tried to wreck the piece. When God lit a cigar they hissed. When he picked up a saxophone and tooted they booed. But pandemonium did not break loose until God accepted a highball from Mary Magdalene, grew confidential and confessed: "You know I never did create the World. Queer how that idea started! I get tired sometimes--being blamed for all that happens."

Goaded by this blasphemy beyond endurance, a local Frankfurt clergyman leaped up from his balcony seat signaled to the gallery. There parishioners and sympathizers sat in cheapest seats with stench and tear bombs ready. At the signal they let fly, aiming not at the players but at the patently godless Frankfurters who sat in orchestra stalls. Ladies in sparkling decollete who had never smelt anything worse than an onion, found their gowns and hair suddenly reeking with a liquid that stank like putrid eggs. Gentlemen in evening dress who had never wept, shed rivulets as tear bombs burst around them. Amid frantic pandemonium the elite of Frankfurt rushed stumbling forth pellmell. Meanwhile the good and pious in the gallery--having thrown their last stench bomb--grouped about their clergyman and sang a triumphant hymn.

Shortly policemen cleared the gallery. The local Chief of Police arrived and personally assured Author-Producer Hasenclever that the situation was now under control. Thereupon the theatre was aired, the curtain rose, and Marriages Are Made in Heaven played to conclusion before a few orchestra-seaters who had daringly straggled back, and many a policeman.

Next day the Municipal Council of Frankfurt gave striking proof that in the new Socialist republic of Germany there is free speech and freedom of the stage. By a vote of 47 to 35 the Council rejected a motion ordering that the farce Marriages Are Made in Heaven should be closed by the police. Meanwhile the drama critics of leading Frankfurt dailies exhorted their readers against further throwing of bombs in the name of Goodness and Piety. True Christians, they pointed out, ought to follow the sublime and nonviolent example of Christ.

Fighting mad Christians were able to retort to Frankfurt's too-smart critics that the Savior once seized a heavy whip and laid valiantly about him, until he had driven the last moneychanger out of the Temple.