Cast of Characters

"Hannele's Himmelfahrt" is one of the most original and poignant of Gerhart Hauptmann's plays. In presenting it for two matinees members of "The Swan" company and of other current successes have performed a labor of love and service. Unfortunately the production is not altogether adequate.

For its ultimate effect the play depends upon creating the phantasmagory of a dying child's aspirations. In her brief life Hannele has been starved of affection and piteously brutalized. Her little mind giving way she has been lured by imagined voices into a mountain tarn in midwinter, and is brought to the poor house. There, in an atmosphere of sordid bickerings and wretched squalor, her dying delirium is made manifest. It is a revelation profoundly pathetic, yet touched always with something quaintly grotesque.

In this dream of death the starved desires of a lifetime are fulfilled. The village tailor comes in and obsequiously drapes upon her an angel's robe of silver.

The school children who have scorned and bullied her pass beside her couch, envious of her radiant beatitude and crushed with remorse for their past cruelties. Her mother, long dead, appears as a messenger from Heaven and gives her the flower that is her passport to the life of the blessed. Her brutal and drunken father breaks in to terrorize her and is stricken by a lightning bolt from the Herr Gott. And into all this blends the presence of the schoolmaster, the one mortal who has been kind to her, whom Hannele passionately loves.

In German productions the angels of this vision have the quality of peasant piety and naive, childlike exaggeration. The obsequious village tailor ducks and grimaces like a gnome. The general effect is of a brightly colored Easter card, a tinseled valentine, the illustration of a fairy tale. Thus the pathos of the play is relieved, and at the same time intensified, by subtle humor and lambent fancy.

Very little of this was discernible yesterday. At times the translation seemed stilted, and at other times unduly colloquial— or at least incongruously cockney. With the best will in the world our speech and habits of mind lend themselves ill to the phantasy of Continental folk life. Eva Le Gallienne made a pathetic and wistful Hannele, and other distinguished members of the cast likewise labored able: but the one touch needful was pretty generally lacking.

—John Corbin, The New York Times, February 16, 1924

After an interval of some fourteen years, Gerhart Hauptmann's dramatic poem "The Assumption of Hannele" was revived Friday afternoon for a series of special matinees at the Cort Theatre with Eva Le Gallienne in the role once occupied by La Belle Fiske.

As written, "The Assumption of Hannele" is a complex and, it seems to me, an exquisitely beautiful play. The action, laid in the squalor of an almshouse, centres in the wistful, delirious dream of a young girl Hannele whose life of unmitigated hardship and unrelieved wretchedness had led to her attempt at suicide. Hannele's dream is the very animation of baroque holiday lithographs as we see them in shop windows so incongruously because so gaudily dedicated to the religious motif. The dream is one of exaltation and the fulfillment of pent-up hopes and desires. It is in a mood of heavenly music, of choral voices, of garlanded angels, of silver, white and gold, Hannele's earthly longings are sublimated into the innermost recesses of her dream —an almost erotic fervor lends itself unceasingly to the manifestations of feminine theology and spiritual accent. With Christian legend, there is blended folklore and child fancy. From the beginning to the end of Hannele's last traumerei is expressed simple piety and the devout faith that is so much a portion of continental peasant life. "The Assumption of Hannele" is highly imaginative, superbly proportioned, an almost flawless entity of a dramatic poem.

The present production is in many respects unfortunately ragged. No complete satisfaction can come from an unfinished masterpiece. Miss Le Gallienne's performance of Hannele while commendable for its quiet artistry has more ethereality than the poignant appeal that goes direct to the heart which Hauptmann has so finely provided. Basil Rathbone, as the Schoolmaster, more exactly fitted the pattern of his role, and gave a very excellent account of himself. The rest of the cast provided a number of superficial characterizations, none of which, except perhaps the vivid portrait of the brutish Mattern by Charles Francis, merits particular praise. The production was ineffectively staged for which credit was given on the program to John D. Williams. Some will have it, however, that Mr. Williams not so much as ventured near the Cort Theatre while "Hannele" was in the making. In view of "Rain" which came by way of being a stage-director's triumph, somebody ought to plead guilty.

—Donald Freeman, The Columbia Spectator, February 18, 1924

While it can be truly said that "The Assumption of Hannele" is an interesting play and that this particular production is well done, with equal truth one has to confess that it is not the sort of thing one goes to see twice. This story of a poor, ill-treated, miserable girl, rescued after an attempt at suicide, wishing to die and thus be out of her misery makes a depressing play. The projection of the child's beliefs; her vision of heaven, in her delirium, with its angels; her dead mother, the kindness of the stranger are very well conceived but this reviewer was not particularly intrigued by it.

You may well say that this is just the way in which it happens to strike my particular fancy and that my inclinations do not run along these lines. To which I would reply that you are perfectly right and then point out that my duty is but to report my particular reactions to any given play. That is all any reviewer can do. Still, one tries to be fair, even when one is not particularly charmed. I can believe that some people would be very pleased with "The Assumption of Hannele."  If they like this sort of play, they will like this production, for it is well acted and produced.

Eva Le Gallienne plays Hannele and registers the pathos, the longing, the aching heart of the girl, very beautifully. There is this quality to Miss Le Gallienne's art which lends itself to the portrayal of such characters and she is quite at her best in the part.

Basil Rathbone, a sterling actor, found no difficulty in portraying the schoolmaster and the stranger. He was particularly good in the latter role, giving it an air of strength, yet with a touch of loving tenderness that was exactly what it called for.

Alice John, as Sister Martha, was most convincing and the balance of the characters—and there is a very long list of them—were excellently done by those who had them in hand.

The staging was beautifully done. It was always in the right key; it always had the requisite air of mystery about it. Altogether I should say that everything was done for the play that could be done. Yet, I did not like it.

A thoroughly worthy production of Hauptmann's play; splendidly acted and staged.

—Gordon Whyte, The Billboard, February 23, 1924