Revival

When Alia Nazimova revived Ghosts on Broadway last week Reviewer Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times, in line with the current critical tendency to regard the plays of Henrik Ibsen as dated, called the drama "only a temperate statement of an ugly thought with a milk-&-gruel attack upon authority and pious idealism." Nevertheless, nobody but Eugene Brieux has since staged the tragedy of venereal inheritance so terribly as Ibsen. As for timeliness, the final "mercy murder" in Ghosts might have been cribbed from last month's front pages (TIME, Nov. 18 et seq.). At any rate, the drama offers in the intricate role of Mrs. Alving a challenge for any actress, no matter how great.

As the abused widow of a man who not only betrayed her but also infected her son Oswald, Mme Nazimova, now 56, manages to convey every shade of pride, courage and despair, by her trick of singing rather than speaking her lines, by the manifold gestures of her hands and even of her back. Her supporting cast--McKay Morris, Harry Ellerbe and pretty Ona Munson, fresh from musicomedy--seems to have caught fire itself from the sparks of her genius.

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