The Best Plays

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

SERIOUS

THE GREEN HAT--Michael Arlen's novel made into a glittering footlight tale by Katherine Cornell, Margalo Gillmore, and one or two others.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS--Eugene O'Neill's sombre tragedy of the young wife who fell in love with the son of her harsh New England husband.

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN--The strange tale of a girl who shot her stepfather and was aided in her flight from justice by a gang of tramps.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED--Pauline Lord still giving the best performance in town as the scrubby San Francisco waitress who married by mail an old Italian vine-grower.

WHITE CARGO--African climate eating into the moral fibre of Englishmen gone out to work a living from the tropics.

LESS SERIOUS

Is ZAT So?--A pair of picturesque and talkative prize fighters who were suddenly taken up by society.

THE POOR NUT--A college youth who had more brains than social brilliance, but made up for the latter with a fleet pair of legs.

ARMS AND THE MAN--Shaw's early war satire flawlessly revived by Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, and the Theatre Guild.

THE BUTTER AND EGG MAN--A penetrating tale of the theatre, behind the scenes in which a young man from Chillicothe invests his all in a bum show.

THE VORTEX--Noel Coward, Englishman, giving a startlingly sharp performance in his own play about looser society in London.

CRADLE SNATCHERS--A sedulously salacious piece about three middle-aged wives and three college boys, which seems to amuse a great many people.

MUSICAL

For chorus girls, costumes, and comedy the best are: Rose-Marie; The Student Prince; Big Boy; The Vagabond King; No, No, Nanette; Artists and Models; Louie the 14th; Sunny,