First Nights

The Adding Machine. The play deals with a man who kills his boss. That in itself is comprehensible, possibly even commendable. Mr. Zero (Dudley Digges) has spent 25 years adding figures. Then his employer tells him that an adding machine will take his place. You don't see the murder. You see the inside of Zero's head in the course of it. The two men and the furniture all start whirling. Figures dance fantastically against the background. Through a sudden darkness stab flashes of red fire. That is the killing.

At the trial Mr. Zero tells what it means to have a life made up entirely of adding and then to have the adding taken away from you. But Justice, a carven figure in a twisted courtroom, is relentless. Mr. Zero is executed and buried. There is a graveyard scene, indelicately begun and somewhat gruesomely sustained. There is a scene in the Elysian Fields, where all that Zero has missed in life is his for the asking. But he finds the moral code of Heaven dubious and the company disreputable. He leaves and turns up in another quarter of the hereafter, consisting largely of a great adding machine, with which Zero is having the time of his immortal life. But he is unexpectedly packed off to Earth again, with the news that he will have to live the same old life over and over again until his soul gets worn out.

The play at times seems to touch on something rather magnificent.

John Corbin: ". . . best and fairest example of the newer expressionism."

Heywood Broun: " A little is cheap, some is muddled, but it is all alive."

Alexander Woollcott: ". . . . a play worth seeing."

The Guilty One. This is about a man who tells his wife (Pauline Frederick) that he has murdered her prospective lover. For almost three acts you think he has and keep hoping that the police will come and take him away, thus stopping the play. They don't. There wasn't actually any murder at all. It was just a sly device to make the wife stay home. The joke is on her. Not even the authors are really murdered. But they will be.

Kenneth Macgowan: ". . . badly managed . . . 'theatrical absurdity."

Alexander Woollcott: ". . . an odd opus."

Jack and Jill. If the Moscow Players were to venture into musical com- edy, this would be an ideal vehicle. Nothing would be lost to the English-speaking spectator by its translation into Russian. And he would be spared a certain degree of pain.

It is an excellent thing to watch. There are pretty faces, there are Ann Pennington's dimpled knees, there are some settings of real beauty, there are curtains by R. Marsh, there are notable costumes. And the music is not offensive. Brooke Johns wields his voice and his banjo to good effect. Unfortunately there is also a plot--something about a magic chair that makes you tell the truth. The heroine injudiciously sits in it just before getting married. That, of course, makes tho wedding impossible, and it is some time before she can get started all over again on another one. There are also a few clearly indicated wheezes. They would be funnier in Russian. Lennox Pawle is really comic as a stage Briton. Kenneth Macgowan: ". . . John Murray Anderson's loveliest production." Alexander Woollcott: ". . . Good looks . . . 100; music . . . 50-50; gayety . . . 4." Heywood Broun: ". . . pretty, but laughter has been largely omit- ted." The Love Set. The comic burglar who turns out to be the girl's father is not as bad as the rest of it.