New Plays

Chicken Feed. Plays produced by John Golden must get very tired of being always called nice and clean. But there seem no other adjectives for Chicken Feed--it is just one of those nice, clean plays about married life in a small town that inevitably bring up the mention of The First Year. Only this time it's the dozenth year instead of the first. And the crux comes when the wives concerned, growing weary of always having to ask their husbands for another dollar for the milkman, demand a 50-50 split of the family income, if they have to strike for it. They do strike. The husbands, left alone, get egg all over the place and forget to empty the icebox pan. After much farcing the happy reconciliation arrives. Acceptable amusement, demonstrating Miss Roberta Arnold's fine comedy sense throughout. Oh, yes-- it was written by Guy Bolton--and it's a nice, clean play.

A Lesson in Love. Captain Briquette (William Faversham) was a candid Frenchman. He believed in saying "stomach" right out in company and disapproved of Beatrice Audley (Emily Stevens) when she gave a former friend the cold English eye just because the friend had eloped to Kamchatka with a bachelor lover. So he decided to teach Beatrice a lesson in love--and proved such an interesting teacher that Beatrice was all ready to depart with him unmarried, when he finally produced a license, remarking that he had really meant to marry her all the while and had just wanted to improve her sense of charity by his little trick. A genuine idea lurks in this otherwise ordinary comedy, and Emily Stevens' gorgeous amorosity makes it particularly worth seeing.

Alexander Woollcott: "Interesting all the way through."

Percy Hammond: " An ornamental drama, literate, ample of speech and performance."

Casanova. Casanova, in life, was not only Don Juaner than Don Juan ever thought of being--he wrote eight volumes or so of memoirs to prove it. On the stage, in this play adapted from the Italian by Sydney Howard, he is somewhat expurgated but still romantic. The only real amour that dramatic exigencies permit him is one with Henrietta. The 300 others are sufficiently indicated in the delightful ballet-prologue. But space is left for the repentance of his dotage when, 20 years later, soothed by the sight of his illegitimate daughter, he dies kissing the carpet she has just walked over. A couple of kitchen maids spurn his defunct form with the epitaph, " Poor old man."

The costumes are glittering and colorful; Katharine Cornell, superb; Lowell Sherman, sedulously rakish.

Alexander Woollcott: "One of those colorful, romantic pieces that recall the Mansfield repertoire .... magnificently set "

Nifties of 1923. An attempt by William Collier and Sam Bernard to revive the old Weber and Fields sort of show, with the assistance of Ray Dooley, Hazel Dawn, Van and Sehenck, Frank Crummit and others. Except for a few bright spots, a rather dull attempt to anyone not historically interested in the development of the revue. The bright spots include Peggy and Cortez' exceptional dancing, a low-comedy picnic --Keep Off the Grass, Collier and Bernard as Mr. and Mrs. Davidson in a burlesque of Rain* But the funniest thing in the show is a would-be serious ballet dealing with an Orchid, a Flame and Two Butterflies. This would furnish a likely subject for a W. E. Hill cartoon.

Heywood Broun: "Far and away the, feeblest of the current revues" Percy Hammond: "Not the most magnificent of the current revues but the funniest."

*Thls Is the third burlesque of Rain of the season. Others have been included in Artists and Models and in the now defunct Newcomers.