[Though] "Balloon" cannot be regarded as an "intellectual" play, it is none the less true that its writing must have first been impelled by a general idea. To put it briefly, Mr. Colum purports to show that a man's acts are significant only as they are expressions of his own inner being, and that a world where action becomes a value in itself is a ludicrous and empty show.
But this is the world we live in; and in the play it is represented by the great hotel in Megalopolis. Here are gathered all the heroes of the earth, the moral and literal acrobats whose astonishing and useless feats make the daily spectacle of our civilization. Here athletic actresses, esthetic millionaires, erudite sportsmen and lettered politicans pass in a fleeting and colorful pageant. And on the square outside the hotel stands Mr. Colum's little hero, Casper, who, like all of us, yearns to be part of the glory he beholds but cannot share. If the opportunity offered itself, he wonders, could he too not accomplish some overwhelming deed to place him with these fabulous creatures? Fortune favors him, and he is enabled to take a room in the hotel for a day. Because he is a person simple enough to be extraordinary he wins a momentary notoriety. But he soon learns that the most beautiful woman in the hotel is a girl he once knew when he was traveling with a sort of circus, the most companionable man, an old clown of the same company. More than one opportunity for the "great" deed is offered him—the most sensational being the chance to steal away in a balloon with his girl—but he seems inadequate to all of them. At last he renounces the idea of doing things he didn't want to do in the first place and, with his girl, returns to the square, his trade and the open road.
