Russian Ballet) are imported. But whispers and husks have about as
much influence as the "New York Times" in a mayoralty campaign, and as
a result we find the American theatre as little aware of world
activities in the drama as a deaf mute living on a pole in the desert
of Sahara would be. Indeed any intrepid foreign investigator who
wishes to study the American drama, American acting, and American
stage decoration will find them in almost as virgin a condition as
they were in the time of Lincoln.

A few rude assaults have been made on this smug eupepsy. I might
mention the coming of Paul Orleneff, who left Alla Nazimova with us to
be eventually swallowed up in the conventional American theatre. Four
or five years ago a company of Negro players at the Lafayette Theatre
gave a performance of a musical revue that boomed like the big bell in
the Kremlin at Moscow. Nobody could be deaf to the sounds. Florenz
Ziegfeld took over as many of the tunes and gestures as he could buy
for his _Follies_ of that season, but he neglected to import the one
essential quality of the entertainment, its style, for the
exploitation of which Negro players were indispensable. For the past
two months Mimi Aguglia, one of the greatest actresses of the world,
has been performing in a succession of classic and modern plays (a
repertory comprising dramas by Shakespeare, d'Annunzio, and Giacosa)
at the Garibaldi Theatre, on East Fourth Street, before very large and
very enthusiastic audiences, but uptown culture and managerial acumen
will not awaken to the importance of this gesture until they read
about it in some book published in 1950....

All of which is merely by way of prelude to what I feel must be
something in the nature of lyric outburst and verbal explosion. A few
nights ago a Spanish company, unheralded, unsung, indeed almost
unwelcomed by such reviewers as had to trudge to the out-of-the-way
Park Theatre, came to New York, in a musical revue entitled _The Land
of Joy_. The score was written by Joaquin Valverde, _fils_, whose
music is not unknown to us, and the company included La Argentina, a
Spanish dancer who had given matinees here in a past season without
arousing more than mild enthusiasm. The theatrical impressarii, the
song publishers, and the Broadway rabble stayed away on the first
night. It was all very well, they might have reasoned, to read about
the goings on in Spain, but they would never do in America. Spanish
dancers h