It is
brought before us with unquestionable skill; it makes us as
uncomfortable as it wishes to make us. But such a situation has
absolutely no artistic value, because terror without beauty and without
significance is not worth causing. When the husband, with his ear at
the telephone, hears his wife tell him that some one is forcing the
window-shutters with a crowbar, we feel, it is true, a certain
sympathetic suspense; but compare this crude onslaught on the nerves
with the profound and delicious terror that we experience when, in "La
Mort de Tintagiles" of Maeterlinck, an invisible force pushes the door
softly open, a force intangible and irresistible as death. In his acting
Mr. Charles Warner was powerful, thrilling; it would be difficult to
say, under the circumstances, that he was extravagant, for what
extravagance, under the circumstances, would be improbable? He had not,
no doubt, what I see described as "le jeu simple et terrible" of
Antoine, a dry, hard, intellectual grip on horror; he had the ready
abandonment to emotion of the average emotional man. Mr. Warner has an
irritating voice and manner, but he has emotional power, not fine nor
subtle, but genuine; he feels and he makes you feel.
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