New Plays

Puppets. Frances Lightner has concocted a ragged play about rag dolls, human and otherwise. Into a rather unusual setting of a marionette theater on Mulberry Street, Manhattan, the playwright plucks somewhat forcibly at a snatch of the Pagliacci motif.

The proprietor of the puppet show, an Italian with a heart as big as an ox, and perhaps a head of the same quality, marries an elfin, wistful sprite of a wife a few minutes before charging off to war. On his return, he is deaf from the conflict, enabling his wife to carry on her languishing conversations with her ad interim lover.

The manipulation of the manikins is made to suggest at one point a parallel to the sub-rosa and subauricular romance of the wife and her sweetheart. Ultimately, the husband discovers the liaison, offers his breast to the dagger of the other man. But the affair is hushed up without unnecessary stabbing.

Interwoven in this uneven melodrama is the suggestion, to be expected, of men being the sport of hidden strings of fate and passion. But sometimes, as in the actual marionette show put upon the stage, the strings are made too evident by the dramatist. Effects of huge shadows and splashes of vivid color sometimes divert attention from the fact that the characters themselves are pulled about in jerks. Miriam Hopkins, erstwhile of musical comedy, and Fredric March as the lover have several plangent scenes together, and C. Henry Gordon pitches about energetically as the husband. But the trail of the sawdust is over the play.

Alexander Woollcott -- "Much effective material thrown to the wind in the writing and to a certain extent in the acting."

Stark Young -- "A little melodrama, brightened with the happy gaucheries of puppets in their wires and plumes and shields of brass, but delayed with a loosely threaded tale and vaguish manner of telling."

The Fall Guy. A pleasant game might be played at guessing just which parts of this comedy the spectator had viewed before. It has bright echoes of Clarence and The First Year, besides other ingredients. In fact, it is the unheroic young hero of The First Year fallen among thieves.

Ernest Truex plays, in that softly purring, neatly whimpering style of his, a little drug clerk out of a job, who succumbs in a moment of weakness to harboring a fearsome suitcase, crammed with bootleg liquor. Unknown to him, it also contains illicit narcotics and, when these are discovered, the little clerk naturally goes into the toils. Eventually he turns the tables, captures the head of the dope gang, is awarded by the authors a berth on the detective force out of gratitude for his ingenious acting.

Truex's acting gives vitality to the play, but the authors, James Gleason and George Abbott, have also flecked it with amusing slang and bedecked it with gaudy, entertaining characters. Ralph Sipperly, as a wilful saxophone player, and Beatrice Noyes work themselves into the skin of their parts. The play is notable as the second success of the season on which Gleason has exercised his pen -- establishing a record for the winter. He is co-author of Is Zat So?

Percy Hammond -- "As amusing a fable as if it had been written by Frank Craven."

Stark Young -- "Safe and sound and tried and trusty."

Ziegfeld Follies. The outstanding feature of the average revue is a lack of crackling comedy. But Florenz Ziegfeld's new manufacture of merriment and maidenly display has more than a dash of this paprika ordinarily so repugnant to musical producers.

It is the best Follies in years, and W. C. Fields as the long-suffering drug store owner, and again as the harassed flat dweller, trying to sleep on his back porch, adds his goofy guff to the gaiety. Ray Dooley, in her typical characterization of a squawking brat, Will Rogers with his apt sallies at the expense of everyone from the President down, and Tom Lewis, Vivienne Segal and the diabolically enchanting Ann Pennington are others in the festive alliance. And to be reckoned with them in provocative quality are the settings and curtains by Norman-Bel Geddes for The Comic Supplement, immortalizing perkily the outrageously derisive spirit of the comic strip.

The New York World-- "A lovely, stirring and extremely funny show."

The Handy Man. Originally titled The Carpenter, this play about an odd job character of the ilk of Lightnin' seeks for a mystic quality that is largely supplied by the stage carpenter. When this benign elderly workman seeks to stop a feminine thief of the city from luring an unspoiled country boy into her underworld haunts, he handily summons a bolt of lightning from the electrician's switchboard. One crack over the head, and the girl is saved. Her morality is lifted in voltage to the current level. It is not a crushingly bad play.

The New York Times -- "A simple homily on the evils of wrong-doing."