New Plays

The Enchanted April. There was only one difficulty with this play and that was its too minute observance of its parent novel. If you remember that delightful book it will come back as a gently genial tale of certain weary London ladies who happened to hire an Italian castle. The tale told of their blossoming under the soft suns of Italy. It was the type of thing that the drama, with its imperative demands for action, recaptures uneasily. All the recapturing possible on the stage has been effected, with a pleasant but not particularly engrossing result.

The demands of drama were acceded to in focusing primary interest on the lovers. Helen Gahagan was the girl, the astonishingly beautiful Helen Gahagan who so steadily resembles Ethel Barrymore, possibly imitates her. Alison

Skipworth, as gloomy old Mrs. Fisher, was imposing and none the less amusing. Other sound performances and a great deal of exceedingly Italian scenery rounded out the best evening in the season up-to-date. But it will take more than The Enchanted April to make it a good season. The Sea Woman. The loudest melodrama in some months came in under this title and unwrapped a good deal of sound excitement. On a lonely lighthouse lives a not very young woman and her reluctant ward. The latter longs for the land and love. The latter she has learned from a fisherman along the coast, learned more completely than she expected as we learn promptly in the first act. To shield her fisherman she accuses a Government engineer and the latter gets a bullet in the arm from the enraged keeper.

The second act, ending with the shooting is rife with tension which explodes as the play ends in a blare of red fire. For the girl has dis. covered treachery in her fisherman and repays it by exploding a gas drum and nearly blowing him off the lighthouse. Smoke and screams fill the theater. The witnesses seemed to like it. There are several good performances, not the best of which was Blanche Yurka's as the lighthouse keeper.

The Kiss in a Taxi. A. H. Woods originally called this play The Five O'Clock Man, an almost literal transcription from the Paris title. Five O'Clock men, it seems, are men who have ladies on the side to whom they dedicate their later afternoons. This lady happened to turn up in this five o'clock man's own home where, very properly, his wife was living. If you have been much to French farce, or indeed if you haven't, you can probably call most of the author's shots. Yet you cannot deny his ingenuity in playing an old game with fair shrewdness. He is especially assisted by Arthur Byron in the title part, offering what is probably the best performance of the month. All in all a good entertainment, and one that just falls short of excellence.