The Best Plays

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

Drama

SILENCE -- H. B. Warner in a one-man show, with the underworld playing opposite him.

THE WILD DUCK -- Ibsen made to look alive by sheer force of acting.

THE DOVE -- A good instance of the lithograph drama, retouched by Belasco.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED -- Genteelly disguised melodrama, cleverly tricked out by California sunshine into an air of vital profundity.

WHAT PRICE GLORY? -- The muddy history of two marines and a French girl at the front, written and played with brilliance.

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

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS -- A cruel tale of the old man, the young man and the old man's bride carved by Eugene O'Neill from the granite strata of lonely New England life.

Comedy

CANDIDA--A brilliant cast gives Bernard Shaw's juggling with matrimony the burnish of a popular success.

THE GUARDSMAN--The gracile Alfred Lunt and the incandescent Lynn Fontanne glibly find out who's boss around here.

QUARANTINE--A mildly agreeable inoculation of comedy, with a bedroom situation as its own antitoxin.

MRS. PARTRIDGE PRESENTS-- Blanche Bates and a choice cast give Mother Carey's chickens a new lease of life.

THE SHOW-OFF-- Still one of the most infectiously amusing, with the human jackass leading the middle-class herd.

THE FIREBRAND-- Joseph Schildkraut and Frank Morgan resplendent in a deliciously refined version of the Black Hand in ancient Florence.

WHITE COLLARS-- A good central idea, plus the great middle class getting hot under its white collars over some favorite hokum.

SHE HAD TO KNOW-- Grace George delicately teases the sex problem.

Musical

Those who have their ear to the ground for musical comedy, will be repaid by listening in on The Student Prince, The Grab Bag, Lady, Be Good; Big Boy, Rose-Marie, Ziegfeld Follies, Music Box.