New Plays in Manhattan

New Plays in Manhattan

The Seventh Heart. This incredibly incomprehensible piece blends music and dubious drama in an expose of what the smart set do at Palm Beach. The most credible thing about it is the rumor that it was produced by the sons of the author, Mrs. Sarah Ellis Hyman, as a tribute to their mother. Electra. Actress Margaret Anglin lately received a gold medal for having "kept her work characteristically pure and noble in nature" (TIME, April 4). Last week she played the part of a Greek woman, Electra who, to avenge her father's death, spurs her brother on to slay their adulterous, murderous mother, Clytemnestra. Simultaneously, hard by Manhattan, a real U. S. adultress and her paramour were on trial for their lives for having prosecuted a design very similar to Clytemnestra's by methods scarely more gruesome than those set forth in the play. The U. S. man and woman, were sent to the electric chair, objects of public horror. But from the circumstances that Miss Anglin's play was written when there were giants in theatreland-- by Sophocles of Athens--and that Miss Anglin is a truly great tragedienne and director, her deserving of her medal was if anything heightened. The most glib and cocky of metropolitan critics could not deny that the towering pretensions of classicism had been fulfilled. On the vast stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, amid architecture massively austere, Miss Anglin, nobly ominous in black, was supported by a company sharing her earnestness and schooled by her to simplicity of gesture and the slow pace of portentous happenings. Their execution fell short of hers-- Michael Strange (Mrs. John Barrymore) slipping sometimes into picayune realism in the role of Chrysothemis, Ruth Holt Boucicault being a trifle shallow as foul Clytemnestra. But lack of preparation was their ample excuse. That their few flaws would soon be remedied seemed likely when, the play's two-day run being highly acclaimed, it was moved into the Al Jolson Theatre for an indefinite run.

The Lady Screams. Not even two blistering screams furnished by the heroine were enough to wake up the gasping plot or the exhausted audience as this play wandered through an unhappy two and a half hours. Stolen pearls, a onetime manicurist protegee were the chief concerns of the Yale dramatic student author.

Triple Crossed. With an unexpectedly loaded pistol, murder is done on the stage. The play halts. Policemen swarm in. The entire audience is under arrest and suspect. From this sanguine beginning the play proceeds through an ingenious labyrinth of surprises that would have been far more spine-chilling if The Spider (TIME, April 4) had not arrived first in Manhattan with much the same formula. A horde of unnamed actors are planted in the audience to be yanked from their seats, shoot from the balcony and participate generally in what looks like an impromptu actors' tong war.

A Night in Spain. Billed in the provinces as "A Tabasconian Extravaganza, Torrid as the Calorific Passion of Colorful Castile" with "Seventy Stunning, Seductive, Saltatorial Senoritas," this revue was gleefully flayed by provincial critics. But three months of wandering, trimming and revision have turned it into a saturnalia as amusing as it is brash. Ted Healy, Phil Baker and Stanley Rogers crack immoderatly wise. Cortez & Peggy, the Hoffman and Foster Girls and the Trainor Brothers have nervous, agile feet. Dancer Helba Huara, imported from Spain as atmosphere, insinuates her vivid self throughout the program. Spanish Art Theatre (in repertory). To the non-linguist who fishes only an occasional lilting "manana" out of the lulling flow of Spanish, charming, piquant Catalina Barcena is the prize catch of these repertory evenings. Disarmed by her freshness and simplicity, critics mentioned Pauline Lord, June Walker, Ruth Gordon and the young Maude Adams in their fumblings for comparison. Against scenery that is sometimes like thick brown slices of gingerbread, sometimes mere impromptu impressionism, she acts with casual spontaneity.

The Plays: Shaw, Shakespeare and Ibsen are occasional intruders among this hispanic company. But from prolific Martinez Sierra, founder and director of the Spanish Art Theatre, came most of its repertory. For his U. S. premiere, which the Spanish Ambassador journeyed up from Washington to see, he selected a bright-hued sequence of lyric love called The Road to Happiness, This road wound among gypsy tents and Spanish villages leading a peasant girl apparently nowhere but teaching her a lot about life on the way. It was, as one writer wrote, "simply like Pippa passing the night." Another Sierra play, The Romantic Young Lady, indoor comedy, was better understood by Manhattanites, having been produced in translation last year at the Neighborhood Play house.