New Plays

Launzi. The season of the astute Mr. Arthur Hopkins (director of destiny for Ethel Barrymore, John Barryrnore) opened with a drama by Molnar, author of Liliom, adapted by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Pauline Lord, whose performance of Anna Christie was one of the great things of the American theatre, was the star. Particularly auspicious were the omens since the play had attained brilliant Continental success. And so the curtain rose.

When it fell for the last time the audience had witnessed on the stage true tragedy. The production was a hopeless failure.

In the first place, Molnar. He has dramatized the insanity of a young girl gone mad from unrequited love. He has, with the complete cooeperation of the actor currently concerned, made her lover so grossly unattractive that she seems a fool to tolerate him, much less dive in the Danube on rejection. Subsequently she thinks herself an angel, wears feather wings and drinks glasses of milk at stated intervals.

Secondly, Hopkins. This manager is a pilgrim in the lands of restrained acting. So far did he carry his theory that auditors back of the fifth row literally could not hear the whispered dialogue.

Finally, Miss Lord. A magnificent fallen angel in Anna Christie, her histrionic range stopped far short of the ethereal quality of Launzi. Furthermore, she is not suited to the part either in face or figure. Fat angels are unimpressive.

Alexander Woollcott: "Leaves one groping often for the author's intention."

Percy Hammond: '' Seemed to be merely an awkward though advanced chautauquean allegory."

The Nervous Wreck. There are those who have doubted seriously, in print, that Playwright Owen Davis is an artist; yet they cannot deny his versatility. Last year he won the Pulitzer Prize with his gloomy, bitter Icebound. He has now delivered himself of the most supremely silly, the most thunderously amusing of farces. Otto Kruger, the hero, steps immediately into the front rank of our funniest farceurs.

Percy Hammond: " The fusillade of pistols, the racket of overturning furniture, the crash of many breaking plates."

Heywood Broun: "Without the aid of so much as a pair of pajamas ... a hilariously funny farce."

Windows. The Theatre Guild opened its sixth season with a capable little comedy by John Galsworthy. It is a thesis play, indicating that mortals fail to face facts; the windows through which they look at life are dusty. Chief exponent of the argument is an unfortunate girl who takes domestic service after a prison term. She is promptly discovered in the arms of the son of the house. While these things furnish two hours of agreeably interesting conversation, it cannot be said that the plan is either philosophically or dramatically momentous.

Unfortunately, the Guild erred in their usual keen judgment of players. Phyllis Povah is far too wholesome in the leading part, lacking entirely the cutting edge of bitterness to make the character convincing. The remainder of the cast, however, were shrewdly chosen. Particularly competent was the veteran Guild actress Helen Westley (laconic mother who preferred as conversational material lobster salad to liberalism).

Battling Butler. There are three critical adjectives convenient to the description of musical comedy-- good, bad, terrible. This example belongs emphatically in the first class. Speed is the keynote. Charles Ruggles and William Kent are the comedians.