Arts & Culture
A review - The thing that counts
Published 24 April 2006
Taken from the New Statesman archive, 9 February 1935.
To be fair to O’Casey, his review of the published text of the play appeared in the books (or “Current Literature”) pages, and not in “Plays and Pictures”. But he was attacking a sacred cow. Greenwood’s
novel of Love on the Dole, recounting Sally Hardcastle’s hard life and tough choices in Depression-era Salford, was already established as — and would continue to be for many years — a popular favourite. And, despite O’Casey’s strictures, the play, with Wendy Hiller in the lead role, went on to success both in the West End and on Broadway. - Brian Cathcart
Love on the Dole is a play delivered by Ronald Gow and Walter Greenwood out of a novel of the same name. It was either dead before it was taken from the belly of the novel, or the two drama surgeons killed it as they were taking it out. There isn't a character in it worth a curse, and there isn't a thought in it worth remembering. It is a dead thing from the head down and from the feet up. Each act of the play is honoured with such bracketed titles as "The Gods Deified", "Worship in High Places", "Catastrophe" and "Resurrection". Curious gods indeed, and highbrow worship on Hampstead Heath. The catastrophe consists of the death of the hero by a blow from a policeman's baton as he is leading a demonstration of the unemployed, and if ever a bobby did a thing worthy to be counted unto him for righteousness, he did it when, with a welt from his baton, he put an end to the life of Larry Meath.
The jacket round the book of the play carries medals of praise on its breast given by a squad of critics to the novel from which the play is taken. Laski calls it a "superb novel"; the Bishop of Durham tells us that "it is remarkable and poignant"; and the Spectator says that the book is written with "vivid clarity; a gesture, a turn of speech, a cough, and the whole man lives". Well, if the novel isn't a hell of a sight better than the play, then these critics and this bishop deserve to meet the fate, and be finished by a policeman with a heavier baton than that which put an end to Larry Meath. As it is in the play, a gesture, a turn of speech, a cough, and the whole man dies.
Touching on the first production of Love on the Dole in London, the Star tells us that "Labour Leaders are taking considerable interest in the event, and are to turn up in force". They would. This is the sort of stuff to give them. The Proletariat looking up and the Labour Leaders looking down. This is the kind of drama pap that will make them feverish and make them fat. Ernst Toller, in the Introduction he writes to his Seven Plays, hisses at the patronage that artists enjoyed in days gone by, and that this patronage made the artist forget "that it was not his task to serve the tastes of the day, but to serve the eternal powers of life - truth, joy, beauty, freedom, the mind and the spirit".
Beauty, truth and justice have different shapes to different minds. We see today how artists are condemned for finding Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt. Crowds scan the statue of Peter Pan, and smear with tar the Rima done by Epstein. The truth as it is in Christ Jesus - is it to be found in the Pope and his Cardinals; in the Archbishop of Canterbury and his Convocation; or in Evangeline Booth eked out with a word or two from Lord Rothermere? And is justice to be vindicated by Black Shirts kicking the bellies out of the Red Shirts, or by Red Shirts kicking the bellies out of the Black Shirts?
Oh, what has the artist got to do with the honest and careful reconciliation of these things? He is above the kings and princes of this world, and he is above the Labour Leaders and Proletariat, too. And under the patronage that draws a hiss from Toller many of the greatest and finest works of art were born. Under the patronage of the Proletariat we have got, so far - as far as the drama is concerned - such things as "Singing Jailbirds", a terrible thing from Upton Sinclair; Love on the Dole from Ronald Gow and Walter Greenwood, and seven Soviet plays from Russia. No, the artist is answerable only to himself and his work is for those finer minds among men who hold varying views upon all other things.
A week later the following letter appeared:
Sir, - What on earth is the matter with Mr Sean O'Casey, and why, Sir, do you accept such trash from him as you printed last week?
A timid and apologetic note from "Critic" on page 166 of the same issue suggests that Mr O'Casey might have had the courtesy, or have taken the trouble, to go and see the play which he so roundly condemns before having the effrontery to denounce it in such extravagant, ill-considered and offensive terms. I should have thought so, too, but much more vehemently. But no, Mr O'Casey's Irish temperament has run away with him, and he damns the thing outright, though he has never seen it, nor troubled to read Mr Walter Greenwood's most admirable novel, Love on the Dole, on which he and Mr Ronald Gow have based the play of the same title.
G Wren Howard,
Hampstead Way, NW11
The editor of the New Statesman responded:
Mr Sean O'Casey is entitled to express his own views about a book sent to him for review. His opinions, based on a reading of the book, differed from those of "Critic", who formed a very different impression of the play which he expressed in a notice which was not, in our view, either timid or apologetic. People should go to the play themselves to judge who was right - "Critic", after seeing the play, or Sean O'Casey, before seeing it.
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