The Best Plays

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

Drama

S. S. GLENCAIRN--Four early sea stories of Eugene O'Neill done with all the salt and tar and rum that can be collected on a stage.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS--Eugene O'Neill's gruff chronicle of a girl who felt the call of youth stronger than her duty to her ancient husband. Rigid and stony tragedy.

WHITE CARGO -- Mulatto woman, white man, all alone in Africa. A sombre study in loneliness that has played in Manhattan for more than a year.

SILENCE--A heedless melodrama with many flaws and an enormous amount of excitement. H. B. Warner is the hero crook who did not commit the murder.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED --Italian peasants of California involved in a triangle of the old husband, the young bride, the worthless lover. Pauline Lord gives what is probably the best performance of the season.

WHAT PRICE GLORY ?--The bitterness of the French front brought back again by a tale of the marines and how they managed the mud and cognac.

OLD ENGLISH--In a secondary play by Galsworthy, George Arliss presents a flawless performance as an aged and relentlessly English gentleman.

Comedy

THE GUARDSMAN -- Some of the smartest playing and discussion of the season, depending on the ability of a great actor to act so well as to seduce his own wife.

CANDIDA--George Bernard Shaw receives a brilliant interpretation by Katherine Cornell, Richard Bird and Pedro de Cordoba in what is one of the few plays that must not be missed.

MRS. PARTRIDGE PRESENTS -- Reviewed in this issue.

QUARANTINE -- Solely for admirers of Helen Hayes. A light comedy in which she elopes with an entirely unsuspecting male.

THE SHOW-OFF--Large talk and loud laughter over the young man who talks all the time and succeeds in saying nothing.

THE FIREBRAND--The strange old sinners of the Middle Ages chase one another through the complications of a modern bedroom farce.

MINICK -- A penetrating, if somewhat placid, investigation of what happens when an old and idle father meddles too long with his daughter's domestic strategies.