New Plays

Peter Pan. It is ever so long since one could go to Never-Never Land without taking a real steamship to get there. A great many children have grown up in the meantime. But perhaps it is just as well that the interim was a long one, for, inevitably, Never-Never Land has changed.

When Mr. Charles Dillingham went there this fall with Mr. Basil Dean, Author Barrie's special ambassador to the U. S., they saw to it that the forest grew enormously,, that the Indians multiplied, that the pirate crew recruited many a new hand and the funny old pirate ship became a thundering big frigate. "You would hardly know the old place," people said when Mr. Dillingham opened the doors and took them in last week.

Then there was another big difference. Maude Adams was not there.

People who had always seen Maude Adams there before missed her terribly. They remembered what a quizzical Peter she was, how wistful, how shy, how genuinely joyous, how she tugged at your heartstrings and did all the little things "just right." This time, Marilynn Miller was there instead, ever so pretty ; light and bright and fair as a fairy. Happy, too -- but that was just it. She was too happy, like a musical comedy girl. And she danced too well, too wisely.

But the lucky thing is that most of the people that will go to see the new Peter Pan, the changed Never-Never Land, will be youngish people that do not remember very well. Or so young that they never saw Maude Adams at all. Other people matter, of course, but not as much as the youngish ones. They all loved Miss Miller. They never noticed that her voice was a shade shallow and twangy, or that Wendy was a mite too old, or Hook a spot stagey. Being modern children, they might have been disappointed had the company been more impromptu and not quite so technically competent.

As things go on, all the players will get easier, more friendly and familiar with their audiences, remembering that refer Pan is much more a party for every one than a stage play.

Alexander Woollcott--"Miss Miller was followed by a shadow which could not be nipped off by all the nursery windows in Christendom . . . the shadow of Miss Adams."

Annie Dear. Billie Burke has been prying about for a good play without success so long that her husband (F. Ziegfeld) tired of the search. He proposed to bring her back to musical comedy. Since her husband is quite without a rival in producing musical entertainment, Miss Burke consented. The outcome was Annie Dear.

Clare Kummer was summoned to set to music her engaging comedy, Good Gracious, Annabelle. This will be remembered as a feathery adventure of an original young lady and a fierce cave man whom she reformed. It was chiefly characterization, unexpected remarks and utter nonsense. Apparently its elusive, airy quality confused Mr. Ziegfeld. He added toward the last a thunderous episode in slapstick and a beautiful ballet. The slapstick was funny and the ballet was a bore. The early episodes in the unadulterated Kummer quality made the show attractively successful.

Miss Burke, still brilliantly youthful, seized all the honors of the happy event although the cast included, with the usual Ziegfeld prodigality, Ernest Truex, Marion Green, Bobby Watson and May Vokes. Her voice is a pretty toy to be played with rather than taken seriously. Possibly the relative unimportance of the music made it seem so. Not that it mattered. The play and the character are more than an evening's entertainment.

Percy Hammond--"Miss Billie Burke was never more enchanting than she was as the irresponsible Annabelle who married a hermit because his whiskers tickled her."

Heywood Broun--"The first act a high tide on the beaches of delight. The second well enough. The third . . . dreadful."

S. S. Glencairn. The Provincetown Players started their season with a foggy fantasm called The Crime in the Whistler Room and critics sighed. Were the promising group (headed by Kenneth MacGowan, Robert Edmond Jones, Stark Young, and Eugene O'Neill) going to break promises? S.S. Glencairn stifles sighs. Promises of provocative and capably significant drama are being kept. These four one-act plays are among the very few evening's worth of money and mind on the present playbill.

The title is taken from the bow of that slouchy tramp in which Eugene O'Neill set his crew of sailor men for the Moon of the Caribbees. It is a comprehensive title to cover that play and three of the group published in book form under the Caribbees title. Bound East for Cardiff, In the Zone and The Long Voyage Home are the companion pieces. They are all sea stories, done in the early O'Neill style, when the first indications of Anna Christie and The Hairy Ape were stirring in his brain. Since the plays have been played and published for some time, their content is familiar. It only remains to be noted that the Provincetown group set and performed them notably. There are no star parts which pull above the surface the heads of one player or another. As a company, they give a singularly complete performance.