Arts and Manners

The Ponder Heart, a joke in three acts, will beat on Broadway for a considerable time, though subdued and in a rather minor key. Unaccustomed asIamto bringing good news from New York’s white light district, I might handle myself a bit awkwardly; and so, mainly to release the critic from the embarrassing state of enthusiasm, I want first to pay my compliments to Harvey.

Now Harvey (as the lucky people who absorbed Mary Chase’s unforgettable delight many a season ago will recall) was a dramatic love letter to a sweetly guileless person, touched with sublime madness. The divine state of well-being which Harvey invariably conveyed to audiences was due to the discovery (so utterly alien to Broadway) that life is worth living. And the sorcery was accomplished by the simple dramatic trick of letting, for a sensational change, a happy man collide with the world. The result was epochal.

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William S. Schlamm

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The Ponder Heart, a joke in three acts, will beat on Broadway for a considerable time, though subdued and in a rather minor key. Unaccustomed asIamto bringing good news from New York’s white light district, I might handle myself a bit awkwardly; and so, mainly to release the critic from the embarrassing state of enthusiasm, I want first to pay my compliments to Harvey.

Now Harvey (as the lucky people who absorbed Mary Chase’s unforgettable delight many a season ago will recall) was a dramatic love letter to a sweetly guileless person, touched with sublime madness. The divine state of well-being which Harvey invariably conveyed to audiences was due to the discovery (so utterly alien to Broadway) that life is worth living. And the sorcery was accomplished by the simple dramatic trick of letting, for a sensational change, a happy man collide with the world. The result was epochal.