New Plays

The Failures. Even the indomitable (and well merited) loyalty of the metropolitan critics to the Theatre Guild could not be stretched to recommend this play without serious reservations. It has all the virtues and most of the glaring faults of an experiment. The author is H. R. Lenormand, one of a small group of French writers who have been striving for years to break away from the conventional. He has broken away. But he has damaged his product in the struggle.

His story has the strong smell of dreary sordidness. Degeneration is the theme; a playright and his actress wife, the characters. The playwright will not cheapen his work to pander to the petty tastes of the masses whose francs support the Theatre. He lives on the earnings of his wife. To gain food and clothing for him, she sells herself to a succession of stage-door libertines. He gets the food and clothes. Finally he turns to a variety of unpleasant activities, brings the curtain down by strangling his wife in drunken frenzy.

Fourteen fitful fragments of their decline and fall are whisked by in staccato succession. Fourteen is too many times to snap the thread of theatrical illusion. Rather a restless rise of suspense is the result; it sags and roust be picked up again with visible effort at the beginning of each scene.

There is one thing which the Theatre Guild can be trusted to do well; that is, casting. Jacob Ben Ami and Winifred Lenihan (who did well as Anne Hathaway in Will Shakespeare) offer two performances as fine as anything in the current Theatre. Masterly interpretations in minor parts are supplied by favorite players of many Guild productions, viz.: Dudley Digges, Henry Travers, Helen Westley.

New York Evening Post: "The Theatre Guild has made another excursion into the theatrically bizarre and has come back almost empty-handed.''

Alexander Woollcott: "A filling performance of a brutally honest play that trudges doggedly through the squalor of life."

Robert E. Lee. John Drinkwater has once more placed his fingers on the pulse of American history and attempted to count the heartbeats of a nation. He has by no means duplicated the brilliance of his first attempt which brought back to the world again a living Lincoln.

Hampered by an absence of active dramatic material in the life of Lee, the playwright took upon himself the leaden load of unrelieved character drawing. Lee was, first of all, a gentleman; gentlemen make a point of avoiding the spectacular. An even keel of character can leave only a steady wake. Steadiness implies monotony.

In such a case the only hope for a theatrical biography is the quickening touch of recognition. If the audience can greet the players as old friends come suddenly to life a judicious compound of well remembered actions salted with a pinch of novelty may claim sustained attention. Unfortunately, Northerners know of Lee only such fragmentary crystals as remain from the precipitations of early education; Southerners know far more about Lee than any but a Southerner can ever learn.

Despite these unhappy handicaps, Robert E. Lee emerges as a valuable contribution both to history and the stage. It has been produced and mounted perfectly. It rejoices in two singularly revealing performances (Berton Churchill as Lee; Alfred Lunt as one Private David Peel --a headquarters sniper, introduced to voice the dramatist's thoughts).

The action is divided into nine scenes--beginning with Lee's refusal to command the U. S. forces in the field and ending with the surrender at Appomattox. The Battle of Malvern Hill is the nearest approach to melodrama. Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson are picturesque contributors of atmosphere.

The play will scarcely be popular. Yet it is of decided value as a shrewdly wrought unit of historic pageantry.

Alexander Woollcott: "Lacks the salt, the actuality, the homeliness of Abraham Lincoln."

Topics of 1923. The jaded and the sad have another specific in this revue prepared expressly to disperse their difficulties. It is possibly the most effective remedy of its kind, yet devised by the Doctors Shubert. It contains Delysia, piquant offering from France. It has a quantity of rough-house humor that may be counted on to disturb the ribs enormously. It has a vast supply of startling color. Its music and its girls are equally appealing. In fact it may be recommended as an excellent example of just what a revue should be.

Out of the Seven Seas. You cannot quarrel with a producer for coming to town with a bloodred, dope-dimmed melodrama any more than you can quarrel with a child who plays Indian. There is in our nature that corner that reacts with invariable favor toward proceedings that curdle the blood. Out of the Seven Seas is frankly designed for that purpose. The characters finally end up in a Hongkong opium den. It is preposterously illogical; moderately intense; and particularly fortunate in the penetrating performances of George Marion and Lotus Robb.

Sharlee is listed as a musical comedy. With little music and less comedy, it strives desperately to attract attention with specialty dancers and wornout samples from the old, old bag of tricks. Though Juliette Day is a diverting heroine, to see so capable a personality buried under the deadening debris of utter dullness adds to the general sadness.