New Plays

The Best People. If the visitor will promise himself not to take this play seriously, he will probably have a rather amusing evening. For it is another younger generation jeremiad and proposes that two rising scions of the wealthy Lennoxes marry, respectively, chauffeur and a chorus girl, to mix into the decadent family veins a strain of common sense, that presumably comes with commoners.

Younger generation plays are falling into the category of popular songs; they all remind you of something that was published last year under another title. Accordingly, The Best People displays its youth (brother and sister) immoderately bored with their own expensive section of humanity. Sister is engaged to the silliest ass English Lord that has been dragged up from antiquity and dusted off with modern slang in quite a period. Brother has set his heart on a dumb-but-honest chorus girl.

Thereupon, Father and Uncle George arrange a supper party with the latter lady, hoping, with the unpleasant intolerance of Babbitt opinion about chorus girls, that they can ward her off with wealth. By a curious coincidence common to the stage, Sister is in the same cafe with the family chauffeur, and Brother is somewhere downstairs, very drunk, and jealous because his fragile flower is getting her evening's fodder at the expense of two elderly unknowns. By the end of the scene everybody has strayed into everybody's else private dining room and there is a great deal of talk about going to Turkish baths to sober up in time to go up to Greenwich and get married.

In the last act, the authors (David Gray and Avery Hopwood) twisted themselves out of the clutches of their plot via a supply of idiotic philosophy from Father, who concludes that, after all, the chorus girl is probably the only one who can stop Brother's drinking and that Sister will certainly have some common sense thrown into her by the savage chauffeur.

James Rennie wears the latter's livery and puttees and, though he is always rather an inflexible actor with a single mood, makes much of it. Gavin Muir had an amazing flash in the first act as the wobbling brother. Yet the masterpiece of the evening's acting was fashioned forth by Florence Johns. Those who remember her extraordinarily restrained and tragic performance last year in Children of the Moon will be interested to learn that her new venture invades the opposite realm of the cheap, wisecracking chorus girl, friend of the brother's bride. Avery Hopwood (coauthor) has done, again, for her role what he did so well for similar characters in The Gold Diggers. She bears the burden of the piece and makes it actively amusing.

The Dream Girl was Victor Herbert's last legacy to the world. Last year, a short time before he died, he composed the score which, for various reasons, was delayed in process of production. Possibly the delay was fortunate, for thereby the Shuberts found the time and patience to dress it with deserved distinction. Fay Bainter was recalled to musical comedy to play the star, and Walter Woolf, the finest baritone currently singing light music, was engaged to be her lover.

The story dates from an old play called The Road to Yesterday. The characters stare soulfully at the spotlight and wish for the romantic glory of the Middle Ages; the lights go out, stage hands scurry and scenery bumps in the darkness; the lights revive on a 15th Century garden. Victor Herbert snatched the opportunity to inject a rousing old-fashioned marching-drinking song which, with The Dream Girl ballad and Miss Bainter's I Want to Go Home, are the leaders of a highly melodious evening.

It was once said of Fay Bainter that she was probably a very pleasant person though technically not a fine actress. Since she is not called upon to do any special acting herein, the question will probably not be solved until next season. By that time, so many people will have seen and fallen captive to her naive and witching charm that the solution will probably not make any difference anyway.