Twinkle, Twinkle makes the evening both musical and comic. A cinema actress seeking escape from an annoying, unbusinesslike producer, visits her graceful dancing and tinkling song upon Pleasantville, Kan., where she works as a skimp-skirted waitress. The hero, disguised as a mere reporter, is in reality vice president of a rival film corporation. Love. In the end, everybody marries. The real show is "Peachy" Robinson (Joe E. Brown), rustic Sherlock Holmes. His sleuthing is most unaccountably absurd, occasions a fusillade of wisecracks. Actor Brown's mouth is the dentist's dream. Two human fists can enter here, wiggle around in the spacious cavity. Actor Brown makes full use of his natural asset. Altogether, a better than average entertainment in a season when musical comedy happens to be the thing.

John Gabriel Borkman is a trag-edy of a Napoleon of finance who waited vainly for the world to come to his Elba in a garret, who finally stamped forth rashly to regain love and the world when it was too late. The little pauses between lines, the way an actor paces the room, the tempo of dialogue and movement, make all the difference in play production. To this work of Playwright Ibsen's old age, Miss Le Gallienne has given more careful direction than she has to previous offerings of her Civic Repertory Theatre. Egon Brecher, in the title role, is a picturesque figure, a capable actor. The New York Evening Post: "... at popular--most popular-- prices."

A Proud Woman. Playwright Richman starts out to write a "character comedy." The story: a provincial maid, about to wed a wealthy Manhattanite, finds all her hopes, plans, thoughts, poisoned by the arrival of her sister who brings a small-town suspicion to the guileless urbanity of the metropolis. Near the end, the sister's meretricious snooping is smartly smacked down; marriage negotiations are resumed. The "comedy of character" fails to concentrate on one principal character. Little episodes of suspicion are heaped, one upon the other, to build up a mound of irritation, but not a real climax. No single incident is emphasized to give unity and effective emphasis to the plot action. Therefore, till the second half of the last act, the play dawdles along without seizing upon the audience's imagination or sympathy. The Emperor Jones. Eugene O'Neill's play about a Negro whom terror drives from a golden, stolen throne into a ghost-jungle, is being acted again by Charles Gilpin. Theatregoers remember that, after the first season, Actor Gilpin's work was authoritatively acclaimed the finest acting of the year. Evidently the part has palled upon him, for his present work rings hollow, artificial. Yet for those who have never heard the throb of the tom-toms coming nearer, beating louder, ominously, faster, the play will prove a revelation of what can be done with mechanical atmosphere. At the Mayfair Theatre, it is preceded by a one-act satirical comedy, In 1999, William de Mille, author.

Lily Sue. "Maw, if yer never prayed before, pray now, while I ride to save 'Duke' from the drunken lynchers." Clip-clop, clip- clop--the heroine's off-stage horse arrives in time for a happy ending. The popularity of the cowboy thriller is revived by Willard Mack, dean of melodramatists. Hokum it is, and oldfashioned, but, none the less, it keeps the onlooker clutching, crinkling his program throughout. Beth Merrill, who looks like Jeanne Eagels, plays the gawky pride of the prairies, rolls out her pointed conversation with a pleasant, if not authentic, Western drawl. In fact, the entire cast creates effective illusion. If the West is not like that, it ought to be. Best and most remarkable of all is Impresario Belasco's staging. A little thing like the creation of the firmaments is, to him, child's play. Alexander Woollcott: "Then Mr. Mack apologized. . . . Why, even Mr. Belasco apologized. . . ."

Princess Turandot. The English translation of the Russian translation of the Italian original by Carlo Gozzi, under the direction of Leo Bulgakov, becomes a beguiling bit of theatrical amusement. An Oriental Princess, the fable has it, would guard her ephemeral freedom from the male sex behind a hazard of riddles. Suitors failing to solve her prehistoric crossword puzzles lose their stupid heads. One young Prince not only guesses all the riddles, but makes Her Wilful Highness like him for it, as well. The feminine "shall I, shall I not" is woven into the fabric of a soundly constructed play, one that feels itself easily superior to the crude realisms of ordinary theatre. Thus the hero's papa's whiskers are a haughtily braided Turkish towel, the sage councilors' hats, victrola records. The realistic furniture of the stage is transcended by the art of dramatic construction, so nobody is annoyed because the hero appears in a cutaway with only a sash to suggest his outlandish time and environment. The naivetE of this Provincetown presentation adds immensely to its charm, though once in a while there is a trace of mawkish self-consciousness.

Pygmalion. G. B. Shaw's sage play with a wink is enjoying flawless production at the Guild Theatre. Under Philip Moeller's direction, it emerges a dramatic symphony. Lynn Fontanne (who spent her summer in London picking up a cockney dialect and wardrobe) plays the wild specimen of the slums. Henry Travers is her ragged parent with Shavian grievances against middle-class morality. Together with Beryl Mercer as a simple housekeeper who understands women better than the celebrated bachelor scientists, they offer as fine a performance as the Guild or any other organization, can boast for this season. Liza Doolittle, howling gutter-virgin, is transformed by Scientist Higgins into a perfect specimen of Dutchess Britannica--triumph for Mr. Higgins' theory of phonetics. As the outside of a beautiful Duchess, the love-starved waif finds herself in a cruel predicament. She is more woman than artist, would rather sustain a black eye than the impersonal, scientific objectivity to which she is subjected by the experimenting male. The artist-scientist becomes conscious of the female only when the woman-object threatens to fight him on his own premises, yelling "bloody."