By JOHN MASON BROWN

The Theatre Guild did what it could to make Eugene O’Neill’s “Days Without End” seem acceptable theatre fare at Henry Miller’s last night, Mr. Moeller has directed it skillfully.  Mr. Simonson has set it nicely in a series of partially indicated interiors.  And Mr. (Earle) Larimore and Mr. (Stanley) Ridges act the Soul-Dust Twins who represent the warring natures of its unhappy hero with much technical skill and precision.  But the sorry fact remains that, in spite of the Guild’s first-aid treatment and the script’s obvious sincerity of purpose, the latest drama of Mr. O’Neill’s must take its place along with “Dynamo” and “Welded” among the feeblest of his works.

It is as heavy-handed and pretentious as only its author can be in his less fortunate efforts.  Indeed so static is most of its tricky writing and so trite is the conclusion toward which it labors that one hates to think what a first-night audience would have done to it if the program had not carried Mr. O’Neill’s name.

Once again the first playwright in our theatre has undertaken to illustrate in terms of the drama the all-too-simple fact that each person contains many persons within himself.  As he used masks to prove his point in “The Great God Brown,” so in “Days Without End” he has Mr. Larimore shadowed by an alter ego (Mr. Ridges) who gives utterance to his darkest thoughts and the doubts which torment his life.  And just as he employed soliloquies and asides in “Strange Interlude” to tap the stream of consciousness and contrast the inner and outer aspects of his people, so Mr. O’Neill now has Mr. Ridges on hand, standing in the corner, hiding behind chairs, and playing “Going to Jerusalem” in order to broadcast the misgivings which are supposed to lurk in a sulphurous corner of Mr. Larimore’s mind.

The tortured hero of “Days Without End” is in other words, a Faust who is his own Mephistopheles.  He has been a devout Catholic; lost his faith in his boyhood when his parents died; turned Socialists, Communist and atheist by turns; married a woman who has been unhappily married before but who believes completely in him; and found absolute happiness in his love for her.  But the black devil that is in him has made him dread what will happen to his new-found serenity if death ever robs him of his wife.  It has made him afraid of a love that is almost a religion.  And it has led him into a single physical transgression, which, while it has meant nothing to him, comes near to breaking up his home, killing his wife, and blighting his life. 

His uncle, a Catholic priest, arrives in New York and looks him up.  To his wife, who has had influenza, and to this priest, Mr. O’Neill’s hero (attended by his other self) outlines the novel he is writing which he has based upon his own life, his boyhood doubts, his marriage, and his meaningless infidelity.  His wife recognizes herself as the betrayed woman in the story, walks out into the night in the hope of catching pneumonia as the heroine of the novel has done, succeeds in catching it in a remarkably short time, and almost dies.

Meanwhile her husband has been struggling so hard with the demon who trails him that he ultimately manages to get rid of him under the crucifix in a church.  Doubter though he may have been, he ends up by being a believer, by admitting the divinity of Christ, by discovering the Christ is love, and by realizing that death is now dead.

According to Mr. O’Neill “Days Without End” is a “modern miracle play,” but the description hardly seems accurate.  For almost everything that was simple, straightforward, and disarmingly poignant in the miracle plays of old becomes tedious, ridiculously elaborate, turgid and artificial in this fake preachment of our own times.

Even as a stunt play Mr. O’Neill’s “Days Without End” leaves much to be desired.  It is written in cumbersome sentences that soon begin to settle like a heavy fog in the auditorium.  It has no real eloquence even in its final moments of affirmation when the need for such eloquence is painful.  Its device is as obvious as it is tiresome.  And, except for the short second act scene between the wife and the woman with whom her husband has stayed, the play’s emotional conflict never proves contagious.  All of its parts, save that of the unconscionable egotist who is its central figure, are drab “feeders” who have little or nothing to do.  Like Mr. O’Neill’s split infinitive of a hero, these lesser characters find themselves fighting the battle between doubt and faith in a tawdry ineffective melodrama that tells an old, old story and that reaches the not very original conclusion that faith is good and that God is love.

Miss Royle is lovely to look at but rather wooden and extremely self-righteous as the noble wife; Miss Chase contributes and excellent bit as the cynic who has tempted Mr. O’Neill’s hero in order to get her revenge on her own faithless husband; and Mr. Loraine not only plays the thankless part of the priest nicely but has acquired an Irish accent for the occasion which he has few real chances to use.

Mr. Larimore and Mr. Ridges, as has been noted, divide the actors’ honors between them as the two warring natures of the hero.  Their assignment is not any easy one, but they meet it with considerable ingenuity and skill.  Just why Mr. Ridges should be made up to look quite as odd as he does is a question that is difficult to answer.  One irreverent member of the audience confided to me that he mistook him for Dave Chasen.  I only wish he had been.  Dave Chasen would have helped matters a lot.  Yes, and so would Joe Cook.