New Plays

The Dark Angel. Michael Aden's first play sustains that singular Armenian's record for tart diversion. For The Dark Angel was obviously written by Michael Arlen, despite the credit of the playbill to H. B. Trevelyan. The technic may be Guy Bolton's (who wove the structure, we are told) but lines such as "She always liked small hats," no one would write but Author Arlen.

The hero and the heroine are in bed when the curtain rises. It is War time; his leave has been curtailed. There is no time for marriage. Not many days later a German shell hoists him abruptly Heavenward. Four years later, and she, in love with another man, the fact of that War night together is accidentally revealed at a house party. Not many moments pass before it is revealed that her old love still lives, blind, in a tiny English town.

There is probably no more sentimental scene in the world than the blind soldier and his old love. The authors have not entirely evaded its treacherous softnesses. Yet they have found a sound solution and filled the evening with tense moments cut by keen-edged lines. These circumstances added to exceptionally able performances by Patricia Collinge and Reginald Mason, put The Dark Angel among the finely flavored few that should be tasted.

A Good Bad Woman. When a play goes so far as to annoy The New York World into leading editorial and front page protest, it must be fairly grimy. For the World, as everyone knows, is the loud speaker of anticensorship. And yet the World says of A Good Bad Woman: "Messrs. William A. Brady and Al. Woods have dug even deeper [than David Belasco] into the pile of dramatic offal."

Theatrical observers doubted the wisdom of the World's course. The play was failing when the blast started. The impetus given to the seamy-minded might make the entertainment profitable.

The heroine is, of course, a prostitute. She has relations with a simple-minded millionaire while acting as companion to his crazy mother. He loves another woman, wife of a doctor. The doctor catches his wife and the millionaire. The prostitute gets herself caught with the doctor. She, forthwith, summons her hard-boiled father who murders the physician.

The various intimate scenes and the incredible flood of epithets aroused the critics' and the World's protest. They were deliberate panderings to the shoddy instincts of the masses. Unlike the similar display of Mr. Belasco (Ladies of the Evening), the scenes were never entertaining.

Helen MacKellar played the star role. A day or two after the critics had expressed themselves, she repented and avowed publicly her intention of quitting the play. The move was generally regarded as a further play for publicity, since she must have had time in the rehearsal period to let the significance of her material sink in. She swore sincerely and her performance was generally considered competent.

Percy Hammond -- "A one-horse rodeo of all the phony riff-raff of the theatre."

Loggerheads. An Irish sea-coast comedy, with a sob here and there, slipped quietly into the tiny Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village and was welcomed quietly. In the main, it was an honest play, possessed one excellent performance, and was interesting to the audience scarcely at all. The story told of a feud patched up by the fisherman's daughter who wanted to be a nun. Amid the rolling of exceedingly old country "r's," she married her mother off to the son of the hated opposition. Joanna Roos (as the daughter) gave the performance.

Alexander Woollcott--"Might just as well not have been produced at all."

An Unnamed Play. A gust of anti-Klan propaganda came in for a series of special matinees and asked the audience to call it names. Many of them did. So emphatic were the names that it seems doubtful if the matinees will persist until the actual christening.

The plot presents a handsome and advanced Southerner who takes a Negro's part against the Klan. There is one grand swamp scene with lots of crickets for atmosphere. In the climax both Negro and hero are about to be lynched when virtue triumphs. A number of more or less reputable performers, including Florence Mason, were occupied with these gruffly melodramatic proceedings.

The Dove. It is an old-fashioned Belasco masterpiece, where shots and snarls are finally drowned in the honey hum of an heroic happy ending--all very neat.

Mexico is the land; a dancing girl, a local Bad Man and a young American the principal population. The Bad Man is very rich in oil. The American is quick with the dice and the trigger. The girl is a virtuous dancing girl of the Purple Pigeon Cafe.

It is obvious that the oil man will attempt to possess the girl. It is more obvious that, since the hero is an American, such possession is not to be tolerated. On this familiar skeleton, the author has hung a rapid and unimportant sequence of a fight across the dice-board, a shot and a final curtain.

The loving detail of David Belasco was never more amply in evidence. All the atmosphere that can possibly be packed within the theatre he has drawn from Mexico and bundled about The Dove. He has further provided excellent acting by such notables as Holbrook Blinn and Judith Anderson. Miss Anderson is the curiously unattractive young lady who has so very much more than her normal allotment of what, to quote from another play, one must call "appeal." A descriptive discussion of Mr. Blinn as a Bad Man would be repeating eulogies that have been often sung before.

Percy Hammond--"A good, big, honestly artificial show. . . ."

Heywood Broun--"Lots of violence but practically no emotion."

The Rat (after seven luxurious months in London). The dear old Apache chieftain of the Paris underworld with whom all the ladies are in love is the central entertainer. It appears that he leads a double life. In his flat with the virtuous Odile, he is kindly and playful as a kitten. In the White Coffin Cabaret, he is rude and punches ladies. In the last act, he goes crazy.

The possibilities for every kind of acting in such a composition are obvious. The part was intrusted to one Horace Braham. Some thought him good, some bad. All were sure that the things he had to do were so inept that very little could be hoped of them.

The New York Times--"Can best be enjoyed by arriving early and not lingering too long." The Triumph of the Egg and Diff'rent. Time was when Sherwood Anderson's name drew caustic controversy. His novels and-stories mystified some, inspired others, disturbed everybody. Probably The Triumph of the Egg collected the most comment. The first and title story in that volume has now been made into a one-act play by Mr. Anderson and Raymond O'Neil. It is not a commercial product but, as produced by the artistic regisseurs of the Provincetown, proves a compelling comedy. One questions immediately whether it is comedy. It tells of the efforts of an artless restaurant keeper to amuse a patron with some self-made magic. The magic misses fire. The patron disappears. Probably the greatest dream of the frowzy manager's life cracks like his egg shell. John Huston, a hitherto unknown performer, played up and down the tightly tuned wires of Mr. Anderson's conception and made them vibrant with tragic tones.

Eugene O'Neill's Diff'rent was revived as a companion piece. The play is unquestionably one of the most unpleasant in our literature. It describes the revolt of an oversexed woman when, at 50, the assembled passion of a lifetime bursts in the face of a young boy. For those that can endure it, the play is brilliantly and bitterly powerful.