New Plays
The Goose Hangs High. Regarding the younger generation there seem to be only two attitudes. You must be either a pessimist or a chauvinist. Playwright Lewis Beach is the latter.
He goes about the demonstration of his theory by discovering a household full of selfish brats in incipient stages of art and matrimony. Father, who has paid the bills for 25 or 27 years, is suddenly forced out of a job and the brat brood is penniless. Immediately there is a general rallying round. The selfish brats map out lucrative business careers on the spot, matrimony is postponed and slender savings plugged into the breach in the domestic dyke.
Hovering about is a fairy godmother in the person of a grandmother. She approves youthful intentions so emphatically that she opens ample money bags and relieves the brats of the possibly onerous burden of the fulfillment of their resolutions.
A capable cast headed by Norman Trevor and Mrs. Thomas Whiffen demonstrates the author's thesis with keen conviction. Yet probably the most valuable feature of the proceedings is the author's observant photography of the vast sum of little things that go to make up life in an upper middle class family of the Middle West.
Moonlight. In the latest boatload of Viennese prima donnas arriving in Manhattan came Elsa Ersi. She was promptly apprenticed by Lawrence Weber, producer, and made her Metropolitan bow in Moonlight. Although not a completely devastating personality, she represented adequately the distinguished prima donna dynasty that have come before her. Her voice and tier face are her joint fortune.
There was another new feature in the show--the appearance of Ernest Glendenning set to music. Heretofore he has displayed his amiable talents in straight comedy. Though his voice will scarcely commend him to Gatti-Casazza, it served. His comedy talent is a fortunate acquisition to any entertainment.
Otherwise the show was set in the accustomed groove. The plot was a syncopated version of a more or less recent farce (I Love You). It set out to prove that, given the environment (moonlight, Shelley, far off violins across the water), any man could engage himself to any girl in a month's time.
In addition to Miss Ersi and Mr. Glendenning, Maxine Brown, Robinson Newbold and the Lorraine Sisters were agreeable, amusing and acrobatic respectively. Then, too, there was a chorus. There always is. This one deserved to be.
Rust. Spain has been the magnet of a variety of dramatists during recent seasons. Rust has a trifle stronger drawing power than the majority of previous attempts.
It starts slowly under the complicated necessity of dealing in symbols. The later acts progress with increasing intensity and when the eleventh hour of the opening evening approached, the spectators were rather more than moderately attentive.
Barcelona is the general background, a "lousy, unclean junk pile" is the immediate setting. Symbolically the play argues that the virus of the junk pile eats into the veins of its inhabitants and corrodes character.
A young man (A) desires to marry the girl (B). The Villain (C) desires her for the same purpose. A "murders" C and escapes. C survives and marries B. A returns. X murders C finally and for good. Obviously the solution is an A plus B marriage. X equals an old man. The old man is the deliverer, not only of the lovers, but also of most of the symbolized philosophy.
When Playwright Robert Presnell has been purged by the concentrating essence of experience he will probably attain simplicity. Then his undeniable dramatic gift should well be worth the public's keeping.
The Best Plays
These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important:
Drama
OUTWARD BOUND--An alternately amusing and terrifying study of the preface to death. Generally accounted the best play of the season.
THE MIRACLE--Magnificent medievalism in the most elaborate spectacle ever brought to the legitimate stage.
TARNISH--The philosophies of sacred and profane love and their application to the modern youth.
IN THE NEXT ROOM--The public appetite for mystery exploited in another shrouded discussion of who-killed-who.
THE LADY--The drumhead of old-fashioned melodrama perfectly pounded by Mary Nash and a well trained troupe.
"LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH 1"--Largely owing to the performance of Lionel Barrymore, the old, old story of the woebegone clown is again successful.
SUN UP--A cruder side of American life among the poor whites of the Southern mountains.
MOSCOW ART THEATRE--The third appearance in Manhattan of the greatest repertory troupe.
RAIN--People are now beginning to boast about the number of times they have seen the courtesan destroy the charletan.
Comedy
THE POTTERS--Rubbing salt into the bourgeois mind wounded by Sinclair Lewis.
THE NERVOUS WRECK--Explosive farce, movie style, completely innocent of the double entendre.
THE SONG AND DANCE MAN--George M. Cohan in a singularly penetrating portrait of George M. Cohan.
THE SWAN--The regal grace of its namesake exemplified in a flawless production of family life where Royal blood runs blue.
MEET THE WIFE--A satirical domestic farce on the trouser-wearing wife.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC--Our village Hampden become a modern Mansfield in this memorable classic from the French.
THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH--Reviewed in this issue.
Musical
High notes in the present musical score are sustained most successfully by Kid Boots, Poppy, Mary Jane McKane, The Music Box Revue, The Ziegfeld Follies, Runnin' Wild.