'THE TREASURE’ INTERESTS.
Excerpts of review published by the
New York Times, October 5, 1920
The Theatre Guild, entered upon a particularly ambitious
season at the Garrick Theatre last night, gave its first
production of David Pinski’s “The Treasure,” a work
tolerably familiar in the Yiddish theatres for a matter
of ten years or more. It is a play which
Max Reinhardt thought enough of to present in
Berlin in 1910; in this country the piece has
been in print for about five years, and the Guild has
had it in its possession for a year and a half. It is an
always interesting, frequently bitter, but by no means
(sic) relentless satire on the eternal pursuit of money;
in many respects a remarkably fine play…
The
play is a comedy of Yiddish life, although the theme is
universal. The scenes take place within the Jewish pale
of a Russian village—on the edge of the cemetery, in and
about the house of Chone, the gravedigger. When Yudke,
the half-witted son of Chone, unearths a few gold coins
somewhere in the graveyard, the imaginative daughter of
the house at once leaps to the conclusion that there is
a treasure to be had for the digging. Into the village
she flounces with the coins which Yudke has flung to
her, and when she reappears she is rigged out in gay
finery, intent upon attracting a suitor.
The
effect of all this upon the community may be imagined.
The marriage broker, the President of the congregation,
the man who believes the treasure to have been found
upon his property, the representatives of several needy
and worthy charities—all these crowd themselves upon the
frenzied gravedigger. At first unwittingly, he is drawn
gradually into the deception, until there comes a time
when he himself believes that this daughter has
unearthed a fortune. When finally he protests the truth
his fellow-villagers refuse to believe him; a new man is
selected for the post of gravedigger and he and his
family are turned out of the house.
But
relentless the author is not. Bitter and ironic as is
much of the play, a bit of good comes from even the
handful of coins which were all that the earth
contained. For the gravedigger regains his job and the
daughter has her finery, a bit of dowry and the hope of
a husband…
Celia
Adler gives a signally fine performance as the
imaginative and romantic daughter, elevated for a day to
the status of the millionaire…. |
