New Plays in Manhattan

The Doctor's Dilemma. The commendable industry of retrieving Bernard Shaw's plays proceeds pungently at the Theatre Guild. Not for a dozen years has Manhattan heard Shavian firecrackers go off around the ankles of the medical profession. The sputter of novelty has been muted by time and by an increasing propensity on the part of the profession itself to admit how many, many things it cannot cure. But for those who still regard medicine as magic, it will be a painless purge. For those who still more reasonably revere as magic an agile comedy immaculately acted, it will be a blessing.

For the benefit of those who do not remember, it may be recounted that Shaw assembled four of the finest physicians in London and made three of them ridiculous in the acid comments of the fourth, snow-haired dean of the profession. Woven through the ridicule is the dilemma. Shall the great doctor who has discovered a quick cure for tuberculosis apply it to a worthy, unsuccessful fellow man-of-medicine, or to a blackguard artist who can paint great pictures. He cannot cure both; his perplexity is enhanced by his passion for the artist's wife.

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, lord and lady of the Guild's performing group, revel in their duties as unlovely artist, lovely wife. Equally excellent is Dudley Digges as the ancient and Henry Travers (he who was Androcles) as the physician with touched lungs. The play is long-- five acts, four chances to smoke and meditate gratefully how good it is.

People Don't Do Such Things. Suavity is a rarity in the equipment of U. S. playwrights. Suavity was, among other things, badly needed in this selection. It was needed to tell neatly the story of a man who loved numerous women; married two of them; survived to see them decide to live with him en trois. At the end they had retreated to other, less complicated amorous arrangements, and he was looking up telephone numbers in the faithful old notebook which had been waiting quietly the entangled while. All this is clumsy; seldom witty; always eminently well played by Lynne Overman.

Take the Air is mostly about a hoofer who gets stranded in and about a Texas aviation field. Through the romantic entanglements of a Spanish aviatrix with a throaty lieutenant, the dark plots of a Spanish smuggler-dancer, the comedy love interest of a hot-dog lady and a splay-faced sergeant, he tap-dances his way to the heart of a pretty heiress. All this is played with the aid of a large cluster of well-dressed chorus girls, to gay and trivial songs.

Will Mahoney, as he waved above a flight of stairs in his perilous and finally disastrous clog, caused even famed aviators who viewed the first showing to shiver with terror. Elsewhere he made aviators, critics and common people laugh ecstatically. Trini, billed as the star, offered some sex-appeal and stamped her Spanish feet. One Kitty O'Connor gave cry with what seemed practically a baritone in her joyfully accepted rendition of the song hit, "We'll Have a New Home in the Morning."

Funny Face. Three noble contributors to musical comedy have collaborated for the third time, and for the third time with thorough excellence. George Gershwin writes music; Fred and Adele Astaire dance it. They began together with For Goodness Sake, repeated with Lady, Be Good! and in Funny Face furnish the smartest and best of the new musical comedies.

If the matter ended there, most spectators would be content. But far from ending there, the spectacle is favored far above the average with jests judiciously delivered by Victor Moore and William Kent; more than usually intricate dances; good taste in dress and background; an immense male & female chorus; a plot about stolen jewels, no worse than its kind; and a beautiful chorus girl who is almost certainly Oriental.

Spectators laugh inordinately when Mr. Kent is asked where is his chivalry, and he replies that he traded it in for a Cadillac. Requested to define symptoms, he explains: "Symptoms I'm happy; symptoms I'm blue."