New Plays

Beggar on Horseback. George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, authors of Dulcy and To the Ladies! have gratified even more than usual their impish itching to scalp the tired business man and expose his lack of brains. In Beggar on Horseback they have indulged their suppressed desires by murdering him. Their instrument of vengeance, an impraetical young composer, leaves no doubt of his pique by wiping out the stodgy manufacturer and his entire wealthy, babbitt family.

The wholesale homicide occurs in a dream. The manufacturer's family have camped on the composer's trail with cannibalistic eyes. They have considered him a plump, promising morsel to be gobbled up in matrimony by Fluffy Daughter. In a drug-inspired vision the composer (Roland Young) fancies himself actually shackled to the family. He is forced to devote his talents to frenziedly manufacturing widgets--whatever they are. The natural result is that he slays them all in disgust. Follows a great lark of a trial, wherein a jury of critics decides his fate according to the worth of his symphony and pantomime. Escaping from the dream with a whole skin, the composer wins the sensible girl across the hall and plans to live in a cottage.

Here is Barrie leaping the barriers of restraint. The play brims with mocking, alert humor, almost Gilbertian in the intent to set the world right by standing it on its head. It is filled with nimble characterization, satirizing everything boldly, from headwaiters to financial heirarchs. But it is a question whether the tired business man will quite enjoy being banged over the head so liberally.

Roland Young as the murderer-com-poser rides easily through the play, with delightful overtones of comedy, like plucked strings. Kay Johnson (girl-across-the-hall) and the rest of the well-matched company are capital, particularly the lovely Grethe Ruzt-Nissen in a dance pantomime to Deems Taylor's bright, soap-bubble music. In a smoothly varied performance Woodman Thompson's staccato, expressionistic sets behave better than in Roger Bloomer. (TIME, March 10).

The Wonderful Visit. Another dream play, less truant. It achieves a Messianic message without driving one's tear ducts bankrupt. H. G. Wells and St. John Ervine, in dramatizing Wells' early novel of the same name, have discarded much of its pungent satire, playing safe with more drama. They set forth the earthly visit of an angel, intent on spreading sweetness and light, who finds himself gradually steeped in sticky mortality. He seeks tolerance for a lovelorn housemaid left with a war baby, lashes a war profiteer who forces his attentions on her, agitates the lady of the manor hitherto accustomed to agitating others.

Finally the constricted English village whose smug hyprocrisy has been shattered by the angel decides he must go. He does, in an Elijah-like blaze of glory, being burnt while saving the housemaid's brat. Thereupon everything turns out to be just a dream of a country vicar, going up in smoke.

It is fortunate that Wells and Ervine in this episodic play abandoned satire, since the seraphic role is played by a woman. Margaret Mower disarms criticism in male attire by her chastely modulated performance, illustrating that Heaven is not concerned with pants vs. petticoats. The play exalts at all times. It is a good spree for idealists who enjoy watching our current human clay turned into mud.

Hannele. Funeral parlors dramatized, with typical obituary poetry thrown in. Gerhardt Hauptmann's morbid work has been revived at special matinees seemingly so that Eva Le Gallienne may have a good time dying. In the almshouse of a mountain village, she moans and moons through dreams of her mother and of a lover. The big moment comes when she dreams herself into a crystal coffin for the sheer pleasure of expiring in it. A dank, doleful play.