By HEYWOOD BROUN

Subject to later reservations and revisions, when all the missing districts are in, Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones seems to us just about the most interesting play which has yet come from the most promising playwright in America. Perhaps we ought to be a little more courageous and say right out the best of American playwrights, but somehow or other a superlative carries the implication of a certain static quality. We never see a play by O'Neill without feeling that something of the sort will be done better within a season or so, and that O'Neill will do it.

As gorgeous a piece as The Emperor Jones has loose ends fluttering here and there as they trail along with the clouds of glory. This is a play of high trajectory and up above the country stores and the lobby of the Palace Hotel, Wuppinger Falls, ten months later and Yvette's boudoir there is a rarer atmosphere which makes it difficult to avoid an occasional slip this way and that.

The Emperor Jones tells of an American negro, a Pullman porter, who, by some chance or other, comes to an island in the West Indies, "not yet self-determined by white marines." In two years Jones has made himself emperor. Luck has played a part, but he has been quick to take advantage of it. Once a native tried to shoot him at point-blank range, but the gun missed fire, where upon Jones announced that he was protected by a charm and that only silver bullets could harm him. When the play begins he has been emperor long enough to amass a fortune by imposing heavy taxes on the islanders and carrying on all sorts of large-scale graft. Rebellion is brewing. When Emperor Jones rings the bell which should summon his servants no one appears. The palace is deserted, but from deep in the jungle there comes the sound of the steady beat of a big drum. The islanders are whipping up their courage to the fighting point by calling on the local gods and demons of the forest.

Jones, realizing that his reign is over, starts to make his escape to the coast where a French gunboat is anchored. First it is necessary for him to travel through the jungle and as time presses he must go through at night. Back in the States he was a good Baptist and he begins the journey through the dark places unafraid. But under the dim moonlight he cannot recognize any familiar landmarks and, hard as he runs, the continuous drumbeat never grows any less in his ears. Then demons and apparitions begin to torment him. First it is the figure of a negro he killed back in the States. He fires and the dim thing vanishes, but immediately he reproaches himself, for in his revolver now he has only five shots left. Four are lead bullets and the fifth is a silver one which he has reserved for himself, if by any chance capture seems imminent.

Other little "formless fears" creep in upon him. As his panic increases the fears become not things in his own life, but old race fears. He sees himself being sold in a slave market and then, most horrible of all, a Congo witch doctor tries to lure him to death in a river where a crocodile god is waiting. It is at this point that he fires his last bullet, the silver one. During the night he has discarded his big patent leather boots and most of his clothes in order to run faster from the drumbeat. But it is louder now than ever and in the last scene we find the natives sitting about in a circle weaving spells and molding bullets. And it is to this spot that the defenseless and exhausted emperor crawls, having made a complete circle in the jungle as his panic whipped him on.

The play is of eight scenes and it is largely a monologue by one character, The Emperor Jones. Unfortunately, production in the tiny Provincetown Theatre is difficult and the waits between these scenes are often several minutes in length. Each wait is a vulture which preys upon the attention. With the beginning of each new scene, contact must again be established and all this unquestionably hurts. Still we have no disposition to say, "If only the play had been done in "the commercial theatre'!" This is a not infrequent comment whenever a little theatre does a fine piece of work and it seems to us to have in it something of the spirit of a man standing on the deck of a great liner who should remark, "Wasn't Columbus a bally ass to come over in such a little tub!" The Emperor Jones is so unusual in its technique that it might wait in vain for a production anywhere except in so adventurous a playhouse as the Provincetown Theatre. As a matter of fact, the setting of the play on the little stage is fine and imaginative and the lighting effect uncommonly beautiful. There is nothing for complaint but the delays. Also, if The Emperor Jones were taken elsewhere we have little doubt that the manager would engage a white man with a piece of burnt cork to play Brutus Jones. They have done better in Macdougal Street. The Emperor is played by a negro actor named Charles S. Gilpin, who gives the most thrilling performance we have seen any place this season. He sustains the succession of scenes in monologue not only because his voice is one of gorgeous natural quality, but because he knows just what to do with it. All the notes are there and he has also the extraordinary facility for being in the right place at the right time. Generally he seems fairly painted into the scenic design. One performance is not enough to entitle a player to the word great even from a not too careful critic, but there can be no question whatever that in The Emperor Jones Gilpin is great. It is a performance of heroic stature. It is so good that the fact that it is enormously skillful seems only incidental.

Aside from difficulties of production there are some faults in O'Neill's play. He has almost completely missed the opportunities of his last scene, which should blaze with a vast tinder spark of irony. Instead, he rounds it off with a snap of the fingers, a little O. Henry dido. We cannot understand just why he has allowed the Emperor to die to the sound of off-stage shots. It is our idea that he should come crawling to the very spot where he meets his death and that the natives should be molding silver bullets there and waiting without so much as stretching out a finger for him. Of course all this goes to show that The Emperor Jones is truly a fine play. It is only such which tempt the spectator to leap in himself as a collaborator.