New Plays

The Crown Prince. Of the many mysterious calamities visited upon the House of Habsburg, none was so overwhelming as the Mayerling tragedy. The crown prince of the Empire, only son of Franz Josef II, was in 1889, found dead at his hunting lodge in Kleyerdorf. With him lay his mistress, partner in death. The actual facts never have been revealed. But from what seems to be the court version, Ernest Vadja, Hungarian playwright, has constructed a great, engrossing play. When presented in Vienna, it was the most exciting topic of the day. Zoe Akins put into English; L. Lawrence Weber presents it at the Forrest Theatre.

The Crown Prince (Basil Sydney) loves a baroness, Anna (Mary Ellis). For her he is ready to give up his wife, the Crown Princess, would even rebel against the Emperor, his father (Henry Stephenson). The first move toward revolution, however, results in the death of his best friends, whereupon the Prince decides to relinquish his right to the royal succession, rather than precipitate further bloodshed or give up his beloved. At this point, Anna protests bitterly, leading to the suspicion that it is the crown she loves not the Prince. The suspicion is apparently confirmed when, in return for the Emperor's promise of high favor, she puts poison in the wine of his son and heir. But the Emperor made the offer only to reveal to the Prince his mistress's perfidy. The young man is warned to order a lackey to drink the wine. Anna prepared for him, then observe the effect and be convinced. Instead of putting her to the test, he drinks the poison, knowing well what the act implies, saying, "If you do not wish me to live, I want to die." Whether from fear, remorse or because only in the moment of crisis could she gauge accurately the love she bore the betrayed, Anna also drinks poisoned wine, dies with her hand clasped in her lover's.

Basil Sydney interprets the Prince not as an ardent, impetuous youth but as one of those equally, through less colorfully romantic figures whose grand passion is faith. Zoe Akins' dialogue, at times a little stuffy, nevertheless succeeds in conveying deftly the meaning of the play. The production is generous; the whole presentation one of the best of the season.

Her Cardboard Lover. After four years as hardy Sadie Thompson of Rain, Jeanne Eagels reappears in a long-awaited comedy, silky and finespun, from the French of Jacques Deval. Peculiarly herself, she glides from slouch to crouch as a tawny lioness playing with catnip. Yet so nimbly does she manage, especially in the second act bed-to-telephone scene, that the audience takes her at her kitten-face value, almost missing the sinister suggestion of claws, energy.

She plays Simone, a divorcee. Tony Lagorce (Stanley Logan) handsome, sexy, once Simone's husband, continues to rule her passions with arrogant impudence. She tries to escape from his spell, by fleeing to a gambling resort in the Pyrenees. Tony swaggers into sight. In a moment of rebellion against herself, she hires a penniless, unfavored young lover to act as her private secretary, his specific duty being to thwart by any means in his power her surrender to Tony. This Andre Sallicel (Leslie Howard) undertakes to do. The rest consists of clever situations, Andre ambles through the doorway or appears pajama-clad in the bedroom, whenever the fascinating Tony stands within one insolent stride of triumph. The audience, unless it deliberately inquired of it self, rarely realized that Leslie Howard was acting Andre Sallicel.

In the French, Simone was one time, mistress of Tony, not one time wife. The Frohman office, however, is controlled by Famous Players-Lasky. It was through their influence that The Captive was taken off at the height of its success, lest its "indecency" reflect upon cinema. Likewise, Her Cardboard Lover was expurgated. The play remains for all that a smart bit. But it is noteworthy that the cinema standard is settling slowly, with anaesthetic effect up on the spoken drama which it owns. The ultimate result must be that cinema-controlled plays will sink to the innocuous level where they con vey no ideas pungent enough to offend the greater cinema masses. Lucky. The New Amsterdam is, by tradition, the house for greater Dillingham displays. Sunny ran here for several years in a gorgeous pageant of dance and song with Marilyn Miller. The new show, Lucky runs up a chroma tic scale of splendors to even greater heights of extravagance, splashing the theatre with explosions of scenic brilliance. Jerome Kern's music pleases. A picturesque scenario of pearl-treasure hunt in Ceylon affords opportunity to introduce a chorus of Malay girls. But the most popular attraction is Paul Whiteman's band, which, on appearing about eleven o'clock from a night-club across the street, brought a slightly splendor sated audience again to attention. Mary Eaton, the star, blonde, unruffled, agreeable, has no magic to make this opulence personally charming. Yet the show will probably dazzle for a long time.

The Spider. The purpose of a "mystery" melodrama is to crowd another excitement into life. Five of them are performing this grateful service for jaded Broadway: Wooden Kimono, Set A Thief, Fog, The Mystery Ship, The Spider. The Spider is the newest, the best.

By an audacious infringement upon the usual tradition, the audience is assimilated into the plot. There is a magician-prestidigitator, Chatrand the Great (John Halliday). He performs his feats of hypnotism upon Alexander, his assistant, the while the audience is maneuvered into believing itself in attendance at a vaudeville show. Suddenly, Chatrand asks Alexander, the blind-folded mind reader, to recite the history of a certain gold locket with a spider design, offered by a young lady supposedly of the audience, Beverly Lane (Eleanor Griffith). Apparently there is some dark secret connected with the locket, for the young lady's guardian (Donald Mackenzie) strenuously opposes the performance. While protesting, he is shot. Immediately police patrol the aisles, the vaudeville gives way to an inspector on the stage, Alexander and Chatrand are accused. The necromancer offers to reveal the true criminal by playing upon the audience's nerves in such a manner that the guilty character among them will snap under the strain, thereby confessing himself. Several innocents almost snapped, too. But the ruse was amazingly successful in the attainment of its purposes, chilling the spectators and solving the mystery. John Halliday makes a glib magician, a genuine vaudevillian.