The Best Plays

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

SERIOUS

THE VORTEX--Drugs and dissipation softening the moral fabric of British semi-society.

A MAN'S MAN--An urban and native tale of thirty-dollar-a-week people in Manhattan; and how they fought to improve themselves and failed.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED--Final performances of the California farm story in which the Italian master picked out a wife in a San Francisco spaghetti joint and married her by mail.

THE GREEN HAT--The yellow Hispano Suiza of Michael Arlen has driven up to the stage door and unloaded all its politely worthless characters.

YOUNG WOODLEY--Glenn Hunter participating in a story of sex and sorrow in an English boarding school.

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN--Tramps in the windy West; their curses and their chivalry.

CANDIDA--Shaw's extraordinary comedy back to town for a few weeks with Peggy Wood.

LESS SERIOUS

THE LAST OF MRS. CHEYNEY-- Reviewed in this issue.

CRADLE SNATCHERS--The immensely successful and slightly rancid history of three middle-aged women and three college boys.

THE POOR NUT--College boys in their own environment, making Phi Beta Kappa and winning track meets; improbable but entertaining.

ARMS AND THE MAN--Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne giving their usual exceptional performances in Shaw's early satire on war.

IS ZAT SO?--The parable of a couple of prizefighters who found themselves in society.

THE BUTTER AND EGG MAN--A shrewd and tingling satire of theatrical business when the shoestring on which it is conducted breaks.

MUSICAL

Wit and beauty are most successfully captured in: Big Boy, Artists and Models, The Student Prince, Rose-Marie, Princess Flavia, Louie the 14th, Sunny and No, No Nanette.