New Plays

Sancho Panza. Otis Skinner has turned up in virtually a new type of theatrical entertainment. It is partially spectacle, partially satire, partially a political essay. All of it is seasoned by a liberal supply of slapstick and it adds up to substantial entertainment. The story reveals the Squire of Don Quixote in process of ruling the fanciful city of Barataria. Thus are the satire and the politics neatly wrapped and delivered. The slapstick falls chiefly to the lot of one Robert Rossire, who muffles his true being in the folds and fur of Dapple, Sancho's mule. While Mr. Skinner 'dominated the proceedings, Dapple was responsible for the most engaging drolleries. The most significant features of the production were the spectacular settings and direction for which Richard Boleslawsky, an alumnus of the Moscow Art Theatre, was presumably responsible. He fractured a number of Broadway traditions and demonstrated convincingly that a production need not be a musical extravaganza to merit a small fortune in dress and decoration.

The New York Herald: "Gay, irresponsible . . . bordering on buffoonery."

John Corbin: "Brilliantly irresponsible fantasy."

Time. Since this play displays the same name on its visiting card as does the publication in which these words appear, it seems essential to report at once that there is no connection--surreptitious or public--between the enterprises.

The play is a satirical comedy purporting to display middle age at a disadvantage in contrast to first and second childhood. Three generations of the same family are summoned by the playwright. Father and mother are about to disagree amiably in order that father may marry another. Daughter is horrified; grandfather and grandmother combine with their children's child to prevent the family schism. Their efforts are for the most part amusing and occasionally approach a comic brilliance.

The New York Times: "Provocation of that sustained inner warmth and that happy smirk that are essential to the well-being of the race."

In the Next Room. Burton Egbert Stevenson is probably best known for his colossus among anthologies--The Home Book of Verse. Yet once he wrote a mystery yarn called The Boule Cabinet. Eleanor Robson (Mrs. August) Belmont saw in it another who-killed-him drama and (in collaboration with Harriet Ford) managed the transposition. One will surmise that a mystery melodrama must be exceptionally good to warrant production after The Thirteenth Chair, The Bat and their descending dynasty. In the Next Room is exceptionally good. It states its problem, defies the spectator to solve it, maintains that defiance to the very closing moments of the action. Since mystery plays depend for their effect on secrecy, the plot will remain undivulged. Most of the important acting is done by Mary Kennedy with Merle Maddern and Claude King tied for second place. There is no shooting.

Thirteen years ago Eleanor Robson, a popular and able actress, retired from the stage coincidentally with her marriage to August Belmont. She has not acted since. Her plunge into playwrighting was occasioned by insomnia. In the pursuit of sleep one night she picked up The Boule Cabinet; it so effectively banished the final vestiges of slumber that she concluded it had merits as a play. She summoned Harriet Ford (who wrote for her A Gentleman of France and Audrey 15 years ago), and after working over the plot for a year, introducing romance and laughter, they presented it for managerial approval and production.

Heywood Broun: "There was the temptation to say that In the Next Room was an excellent play for the wife of a rich man to have written. All of which may serve to cloud, a little, the fact that In The Next Room is one of the most competent and interesting melodramas which the American stage has known."

"Laugh, Clown, Laugh!" David Belasco, occult archimage of the theatre, has muttered incantations over an ancient artifice and whisked away the curtain cloth to disclose it as a new play of absorbing intensity. Fausto Martini's "Ridi, Pagliaccio" (Italian) is the source; the story is that of Punchinello.

Lionel Barrymore portrays the clown who could stir the stream of life with rippling laughter for everyone except himself. Mr. Barrymore's recently acquired wife, Irene Fenwick, is Simonetta, the divinity whose love for someone else prompts him to end his life with the greatest gesture of grotesquery--suicide. Ian Keith plays the "someone else" and does it with a fine fervor and distinction.

The play opens in a sanitarium. Clown Tito (Barrymore) is seeking a specific for his melancholy malady of love which causes him to weep at the most minute excuse. Luigi (Ian Keith) is in the same consultation room suffering from an opposite affliction, occasioned by his excesses. He laughs ceaselessly, senselessly.

Simonetta is the specific for them both. In the second act she succumbs to Luigi's importunities. The third discloses Tito surrounding himself with mirrors, defying the clown to make the clown laugh. As he pricks his heart a group of children passing the window interpret the action as comic pantomime and stand, laughing, at the window while the curtain falls.

The staging is distinguished by all the art and artifice of the Belasco brain and workshops. A third act rainstorm renders all the stage rain shed hereabouts as the merest filmy drizzle in comparison. The stars are supported by a large cast in the style to which Belasco stars have been accustomed.

Alexander Woollcott: "Lionel Barrymore. . . deepens an old conviction that they do not make many actors like him in any one generation."

AIan Dale: "All extremely engaging and satisfying."

John Corbin: "Its appeal to the sympathies is genuine and deep."

Hamlet. While the return of John Barrymore is not strictly news, two facts combine to make his reappearance noteworthy. He forsook the electric nebula, which last year served for the ghost, in favor of a flesh and blood actor (Reginald Pole) ; he gave an even greater interpretation than the one which last season served to break the world's record for consecutive performances (101). Barrymore is rapidly becoming recognized as America's greatest actor.

The character of Polonius is the single major change in the current production. Moffat Johnston carried the staff laid aside by John O'Brien who committed suicide last Summer.

One Kiss. There is no discernible reason why this musical comedy is not quite the finest in town. It started as a raging Parisian success; it was adapted by the deft Clare Kummer; it was peopled by the most competent cast that one could dare propose. Yet its excellence is not immoderate. If there is blame it must be laid at Miss Kummer's door. There is a lack of laughter. The company is much the same group that placed The Night Boat and Good Morning, Dearie among the tallest and most enduring of their type, viz., Louise Groody, Oscar Shaw, Ada Lewis, John E. Hazzard. Miss Lewis and Mr. Hazzard do much to 'demonstrate that they can be funny under any circumstances. Miss Groody and Mr. Shaw make excellent love in their normal innocuous style. The Parisian music survives as the most satisfactory contribution to a play that promises much but never quite performs.

Alexander Woollcott: "Dainty . . . charming . . . piquant . . . rather more than ordinarily amusing."

The Talking Parrot. The captious critics could not say as cruel things about these three acts, called a play, as the poor audience thought. The "talking parrot" is, like the play, dumb as a wooden Indian.

Notes

Eleanora Duse finished her engagement in Manhattan and departed for Boston, but not before New Yorkers had called her back for 27 curtain calls at her last performance. Morris Gest, conducting Mme. Duse's American tour, hade her a gift of flowers and a speech. Mme. Duse presented him with a polite answer and a kiss.

Ghost-mad, love-mad, revengefully sane--Hamlet as only Barrymore can do it--New Haven, Hartford, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, London-- such is the itinerary laid out by Arthur Hopkins for his own John Barrymore and Shakespeare's own Hamlet.

George M. Cohan, fond of Irish names, has brought forth another, The Rise of Rose O'Reilly, soon to immigrate into Manhattan.

The Best Plays

These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important.

Drama

THE FAILURES -- Desperately depressing story of a man who had the choice between artistic and moral prostitution and chose the latter. A Theatre Guild production.

HAMLET--The final week of John Barrymore's interpretation of the greatest play from the pen of man.

ROBERT E. LEE--A meticulous and instructive reproduction of the Civil War, Southern version. John Drinkwater scrivit.

MOSCOW ART THEATRE--The Russians winding up their metropolitan repertory. Generally considered the greatest troupe in the world.

QUEEN VICTORIA--Like a beloved legend come to life. Irresistible for Strachey Victorians.

RAIN--Jeanne Eagels as the courtesan who encountered religion in the South Seas, carving for herself what promises to be a permanent niche in the fagade of American theatrical accomplishment.

SEVENTH HEAVEN--An echo of the War which gives evidence of ringing in the American playgoer's ears for a second season. Helen Menken mainly responsible.

SUN UP--The searching 'discussion of Carolina poor-white philosophy which has graduated from an obscure downtown playhouse to the dignity of a Broadway presentation.

TARNISH--Demonstrating that masculine contact with life cannot fail to dull the brightest burnishing of character.

Comedy

AREN'T WE ALL?--Amiable and diverting commentary by Cyril Maude and an English company on the fallibility of fashionable marriages.

THE CHANGELINGS--An extraordinary cast (Henry Miller, Blanche Bates, Ruth Chatterton, etc.) stimulating a moderately keen comedy of modern marriage into the semblance of important entertainment.

THE NERVOUS WRECK--Thunderous rough house revolving about an un-happy individual who lived on the pinkest of pills.

THE SWAN--A comedy of Continental Royalty which is a milestone in the season by virtue of its perfection in playing and detail.

Musical Shows

Those who turn for their most serious entertainment to song and dance diversions will find the following eminently satisfactory: Poppy, Music Box Revue, Mr. Battling Buttler, Ziegfeld Follies, Topics of 1923, Stepping Stonest Wild flower, Runnin' Wild.