The Best Plays

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

Drama

WHAT PRICE GLORY? -The rumble of guns and the snatches of laughter that made war a stern but not so unhappy hell on the Western Front.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED -Pauline Lord gives the best performance in town as the waitress who married by mail and betrayed her master on the wedding night.

THE WILD DUCK -Mr. Ibsen receives what he deserves -a good performance.

WHITE CARGO -White man and black woman drift irresistibly together under the poisonous influence of desert loneliness.

OLD ENGLISH -George Arliss magnificently aged in a secondary play by Galsworthy about an old three-bottle English gentleman.

PROCESSIONAL -Murder and rape out of focus -expressionism by the Theatre Guild.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS -Eugene O'Neill's play which, by reason of its art, has defied censorship of its bitter picture of New England infidelity.

THE DOVE -Holbrook Blinn and Judith Anderson in one of David Be- lasco's accurate pictures of dance-hall life across the Mexican border.

Comedy

THE GUARDSMAN -Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne and the Theatre Guild cast cooperate to make a slender Molnar comedy of off-stage actor life a distinguished entertainment.

THE FALL GUY -How he couldn't help being a bootlegger, most amusingly discussed by Ernest Truex.

Is ZAT So? -Flippant and forcibly entertaining farce about two prize fighters who stumbled into a Fifth Avenue mansion.

THE FIREBRAND -Benvenuto Cellini and his surroundings stripped of their brocaded mystery in a satirically modern bedroom comedy.

THE SHOW-OFF -A penetrating and diverting portrait of the irrepressible individual who talks his head off.

PIGS -Young people, rural life and nothing that will displease rigid moralists.

Musical

Among the song and dance displays, the following are generally conceded preeminence: Ziegfeld Follies, Music Box, Rose-Marie, Lady, Be Good; The Student Prince.