R.U.R.

"A Scene in "R.U.R.," a Theater Guild Production Now Playing at the Frazee Theater, New York City. The Robots have wiped out mankind with the exception of Louis Calvert, who they believed possessed the secret of manufacturing Robots. They spared his life in the hope that he might be able to teach them how to perpetuate their kind." from The Outlook vol. 132, December 13, 1922, p. 648. R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) is a play by the Czech author Karel Capek. Although Outlook was a mainstream magazine, the same image was reproduced in The Labor Age along with a discussion of the play.

The Outlook's review: The Theater Guild opened its season with one of the most striking plays recently produced in New York--"R.U.R.," a drama from Czechoslovakia, by Capek. Its title stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, a chemically produced race of servants and laborers, created by Rossum and his successors with the purpose of eliminating the curse of Adam from the human race. These curious creatures, resembling men and women in almost everything but the power of emotional experience, are shipped out from the factory in thousands. They work, fight, and die for their masters in stolid submission. It is only when the sentimental wife of the factory manager persuades the chief chemist to labor to give these manikins souls that the Robots revolt. Led by a few of the super-manikins, they succeed in exterminating the human race save for a single man.

The play, as its plot would indicate, is melodramatic in character, but it is a melodrama shot through with flashes of brilliant satire. The play is produced in a manner fully up to the best Theater Guild tradition. It is now playing at the Frazee Theater.