New Plays

The Harem. David Belasco received from the French Government the cross of the Legion of Honor for distinguished contributions to the advancement of Art. A few days later, he produced one of the cheapest plays of his career. The critics wrote vaguely favorable reports, possibly thanks to the Belasco tradition, possibly thanks to the popularity of Lenore Ulric.

The piece is a watercolor replica of The Guardsman with strident coloring where subtlety was essential. A husband works busily at his amours through a yellow satin bedroom scene and discovers that the masked lady is his wife. Against a bedroom back-ground that would rouse envy in the heart of Cecil DeMille, Miss Ulric displays extensively what Percy Hammond deftly dubbed her "creamy torso." Details of domestic intimacy are dealt about in handfuls. It is all completely artificial, like a luxuriously frosted cake with tasteless layers. Miss Ulric's playing in a part widely afield from he gamineries of Kiki is as engaging s possible under the thankless circumstances.

Alexander Woolcott--"A perfumed and bawdy farce."

Gilbert W. Gabriel--"About as much delicacy as the Mann Act--farce laid on in broad and loosely-stitched strips."

Close Harmony. Dorothy Parker is known chiefly for her satiric agility in verse (Hate Songs, etc.). Elmer Rice is variously familiar as the author of On Trial and The Adding Machine. Together they have turned out a telling transcript of existence as it is endured in the suburbs.

Ed Graham has a wife whose querulous goodness is an echo of a middle-class marriage which has been running twelve years and needs winding up. Next door lives Belle Sheridan, former chorus girl struggling with a shaky husband. Ed and Belle fall in love through the course of one expertly edited afternoon alone. They are about to run away. At the high point of their adventure, Ed's offensive little daughter is kicked in the stomach by a neighbor's urchin. Ed loses his grip and re-enters his domestic temple of despair, psychologically renovated by the crisis.

The complacency of small minds is the maddening target against which the play is driven, but poor dramatics often veer the strident arrow of philosophy from its course. Interesting, it may not be popular.

Stark Young--"All compact with parallels and full of grim gaiety, domesticity and dull fates."

Music Box Revue. Down in the dingy dance halls of the Bowery there lived and made his living a certain waiter. Between trays of beer he stepped to the smoky center of the floor and sang ballads of the day. Some inner impulse set him to fingering the yellow keys of the piano. He manufactured tunes. The strummer-boy era was just opening. He manufactured Alexander's Ragtime Band and put aside his trays of beer. Last winter, he manufactured What'II I Do, to many the most appealing popular song ever written. Last week, he produced The Music Box Revue, called by Alexander Woollcott the greatest he has ever seen. Who is this singing waiter? Who but Irving Berlin?

Detailing a revue is like explaining why the Henderson's dinner was good or bad. There are always the customary courses. In the Music Box, the quality is inevitably excellent, the chefs competent and the distributors expensive. The outcome is this year, as usual, a tidy and entertaining feast.

A scene of waving fans against a black velvet background, an Alice in Wonderland interlude, a live bear, a shift of lights which turns the cast from white to black, the pantomime of a ballet dancer's home, Fannie Brice, Grace Moore, Bobby Clark, Oscar Shaw, Ula Sharon are in the picture. The music of the erstwhile waiter is the light that lightens it.

Badges. To a nation of puzzle-probers, this ingeniously deceptive combination should obtain an ample hearing. To unweave the plot before your eyes would require several assistants from the circulation department and a committee of subscribers to appear and certify that the narrative implements are without trickery. Therefore let it be said that detectives, stolen bonds, an accused woman, some terrible crooks, shots in the dark and all the rest of the black devices of the melodramatists are in action. Tempered with a fine supply of humor, the proceedings should suffice to interest all but the hardest hearted. Chiefly responsible is the amiably helpless Gregory Kelly. The halting awkwardness, the small cracked voice and all the multiplication of mannerisms he employed in Seventeen are pleasantly in evidence. He plays the graduate of a correspondence school for detectives. Does he find the bonds? Did you ever hear of a correspondence school detective on the stage who didn't?

Percy Hammond--"Another of those trick melodramas with a trick bottom."

Paolo and Francesca. Stephen Phillips, late master of prose and blank-verse, is probably much better beneath the library lamp than he is in the harsh white spotlight of production. This poetic version of the old, old story enlisted the activities of some of the best of our players, was mounted in discerning luxury and presented to the population for special matinees. It dragged.

Old brother Giovanni marries lovely Francesca. Young brother Paolo falls in love with her. With all due tragedy the lovers finally die. Claude King made rather a cardboard character of big brother. Little brother Paolo glowed under the touch of Morgan Farley but never quite caught fire. Phyllis Povah was miscast. Helen Ware as the acid confidant of old brother gave the most complete interpretation.

The Student Prince. A large male chorus swings steins in the air and opens the college drinking chant. The prince in disguise falls in love with a waitress. Excellent voices, elaborate scenery, a seasoning humor and easily audible music are comfortably combined.

The Little Clay Cart. That curious little back alley theatre, the Neighborhood Playhouse, pushed its memorable Grand Street Follies out of the way to do a Hindu play. A Hindu play sounds formidable, clogged with dead bodies floating down the Ganges and that sort of thing. As a matter of fact, most of the CART is comic. There are courtesans and kings, several scenes, no dramatic pyramiding as we know it. Rare colorings and scents of strange philosophies mingle swiftly with the laughter. Altogether a shrewd and sensitive experiment.

Princess April. One small and exceptionally amusing young lady, Dorothy Appleby by name; one prima donna of established repute, Tessa Kosta; one chorus that could dance; two or three tunes designed for repetition; and an exceptionally futile book. This is the sum of Princess April. So leaden a liability is this same book, so halting the hilarity, that the production is of doubtful destiny.

Lady, Be Good. When two or three people such as Fred and Adele Astaire and Walter Catlett are gathered together in the name of entertainment, the entertainment must be worthy of the name. Lady, Be Good is very good INDEED. Assisting the leaders is Cliff Edwards, who makes the simple ukelele an instrument of violent versatility, an agile and pictorial chorus, brilliant settings by Normal Bel-Geddes and music by George Gershwin. And, as if this weren't enough, the producers broke nearly all precedent and bought a large stock of new and most amusing jokes. "You're so beautiful," says Mr. Catlett to a certain lady, "that there have been complaints about you."

The Man in Evening Clothes. When a good idea falls to pieces like a human character suddenly crumbling, the spectacle is decidedly distressing. Such was the fate of a good idea in Henry Miller's production. In the first act, the bailiff gave the impecunious count only one suit from all his belongings. He chose his evening clothes and set out to find his fate. Of all the amusing whirligigs of drama that might have come tumbling out of this conception, few were employed.