New Plays

Connie Goes Home. Edward Childs Carpenter, notable in the past chiefly for The Cinderellla Man, has here concocted a floating-island comedy. It is very clean, very light, completely surrounded by custard seas of sentiment.

Connie is an unfortunate actress. She is 20 and out of a job. The burden of her years has never been so appalling as at the moment when she determines to return forever to an orphan-asylum home in Illinois only to discover that her funds are limited to a half-fare ticket. Accordingly she puts her hair down and her skirts up for the purpose of traveling as an eleven-year-old child. While en route she is adopted by a wealthy Chicago family. Within the household she proves so indispensable that she is finally adopted for life by the household nephew.

Sylvia Field, a young person previously involved in the long flight of The Bat, does very nicely as Connie. Her associates are normally capable.

Alexander Woollcott: "One can sit through without boredom and leave without cheering."

Percy Hammond: " The season's best and most vigorous lollipop."

Chauve Souris. With the rest of fashionable America, Nitka Balieff and his Kussian troupe departed last Spring for a Parisian Summer. There they entertained Americans homesick for Broadway, Russians wearying for Petrograd, French wearying of their tawdry native entertainments. In the course of the trip Balieff forgot a bit more of his Russian, his English improved, his comedy became a trifle more intelligible.

Otherwise the Chauve Souris seems much the same affair that last year tinged all American musical entertainment with its curious strain. Katvnka, A Night at Yards, The Wooden Soldiers still fill the American audiences with the most audible enthusiasm. New numbers also are displayed. Further, little can be said. The Chauve Souris is still the Chauve Souris.

Poppy. After some seasons of successful activity as a player of farce, Madge Kennedy abruptly opens her mouth and sings. She sings very well and becomes therefore very nearly the perfect set-to-music heroine. She is more than that, to those who have seen Poppy--she is the ultimate conception of all that a daughter of Eve should be.

Under the circumstances it is hardly reasonable to expect too much of the lesser flora amid which Poppy blooms. One faultless feature is sufficient for the normal musical comedy. But Poppy is abnormal. It has in addition to Miss Kennedy the funniest comedian at present exhibiting in New York.

The comedian is W. C. Fields, hitherto chiefly known as a smasher of cigar boxes. He existed for several seasons on weekly allowances, from Florenz Ziegfeld in return for certain comic contributions to the Follies. His pool game, his golf game, his juggling were classic. He seldom spoke. Now he too has opened his mouth. He is promptly promoted to our first families of funny men.

Heywood Broun: " Our idea of a good musical comedy."

The New York Times: "Exceptional musical comedy."

Four In Hand. Miss Galina Kopernak is herein the star of one more of those whose-husband-are-you divertissements from the French. The playbill reads: " The Husband, The Young Lover, The Wife, The Lawyer, The Girl, The Other Man, The American, The American Wife, The Bellboy, The Butler. . . . ' The play is not even risque. It is made doubly dull by a blundering translation.