The Best Plays

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

Drama

WHAT PRICE GLORY--Mayor Hylan and the U. S. Army entered a public conspiracy to throttle the best play of the fall. Hylan snorts at the swear words; the Army dislikes the frankly severe portrait of 'Marines at home in the trenches.

--COBRA--Melodramatic, possibly slightly oldfashioned; but distinctly of the type that was once known as "gripping."

THE MIRACLE--Almost at the end of its metropolitan career. Religion in hugely proportioned pantomime.

RAIN--Jeanne Eagels in her incisive argument that wickedness is sometimes next to godliness and even a little ahead of it.

HAVOC --Fairly conventional War story made serviceable by a competent London cast.

WHITE CARGO--What happens to an exile when loneliness merges into mad-- ness.

CONSCIENCE--A patchy parable of jail and prostitution rising to excellence with the performance of a brilliant novice, Lillian Foster.

Comedy

THE SHOW-OFF--Diverting dissection of all-American bluster as it affects the lower middle class.

THE WEREWOLF--Largely concerned with a topic usually taboo in polite conversation. Admissible for its sage and finished playing.

EXPRESSING WILLIE--Swiftly satirical and quite up-to-date study of artistic temperament in the younger generation.

FATA MORGANA--Emily Stevens as the city orchid who frolicked for an evening with the rustic rambler.

GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE --Somewhat sparse brambles of marital infelicity thickly populated with the brilliance of Ina Claire.

MINICK--Proving that an old man blends better with old men than with lower-middle-class rigidity of his son's "in laws."

Musical

The following metropolitan musical shows can be listened to, looked and laughed at most agreeably: Ritz Revue, Kid Boots, Rose-Marie, The Dream Girl, I'll Say She Is, The Grand Street Follies, George White's Scandals, Ziegfeld Follies.