''Rapid Transit'' was a play by

Lajos Egri Lajos N. Egri (June 4, 1888 – February 7, 1967) was a Hungarian-American playwright and teacher of creative writing. He is the author of ''The Art of Dramatic Writing'', which is widely regarded as one of the best works on the subject of playw ...

that premiered at the

Provincetown Playhouse The Provincetown Playhouse is a historic theatre at 133 MacDougal Street between 3rd Street (Manhattan), West 3rd and 4th Street (Manhattan), West 4th Streets in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is named for the P ...

, New York, in April 1927 and closed before the end of the month after 20 performances.

Horace Liveright Horace Brisbin Liveright (pronounced "LIVE-right," anglicized by Horace's father from the German ''Liebrecht;'' 10 December 1884 – 24 September 1933) was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Libr ...

had bought and produced this work. Egri's expressionist play was translated from his original Hungarian by

Gustav Davidson Gustav Davidson (December 25, 1895 in Warsaw, Poland – February 6, 1971 in Santa Cruz, United States) was an American poet, writer, and publisher. He was one time secretary of the Poetry Society of America. Biography Gustav Davidson was bor ...

and Francis Edwards Faragoh, and adapted by Charles Recht. Casting about for some adequate means of conveying a sense of the hectic pace of this machine age, Egri pictured a world in which all of life is compressed into twenty-four hours. Children grow to maturity in a few minutes; meals are eaten in split seconds; tabloid newspapers are issued at intervals of a second or two, and the loss of half a minute is a serious matter. Realizing that this notion alone was not quite sufficient to carry a play, Egri broadened his vision to afford a comprehensive view of the world's front page. Wars and justice, taxes and public opinion: all of these Egri incorporated in a manner that was a hallmark of expressionistic drama. ''Rapid Transit'' had a prologue and six scenes. There were almost seventy cast members. The sets conveyed an impression of cogwheels, greasy steel pistons, chains, derricks, clanking, rumbling, thumping. The tempo was blinding. The ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' described the play as "chaotic at times, but sporadically interesting".Rapid Transit depicts swift moving world. ''New York Times''. April 8, 1927

References

{{reflist

External links

''Rapid Transit''
on the Internet Broadway Database

1927 plays American plays Expressionist plays