Best Plays in Manhattan

SERIOUS COQUETTE--Love ferrets out a flirt's (Helen Hayes) heart and breaks it.

CIVIC REPERTORY THEATRE--Where best plays for lowest prices are performed.

THE LETTER--Katharine Cornell empties a pistol into a faithless lover and a breaking heart into an evening that tells why.

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE--Norwegian philosophies of formidable Henrik Ibsen proudly spoken by Walter Hampden.

PORGY--Negro laughter and death along the Charleston docks.

MAX REINHARDT'S SEASON--An alien tongue (German) speaks in the international linguistics of the theatre.

MELODRAMA

INTERFERENCE--English actors agreeably cool and collected as a girl takes prussic acid.

BROADWAY--First and still best of the gangster-night club murder stories.

THE RACKET--Purple evenings in a Chicago police station.

THE SPIDER--In which a magician has murder up his sleeve.

THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAN--A chorus girl who went bad for the best of reasons.

FUNNY

BURLESQUE--The love story of a soubrette and a low comedian.

THE ROAD TO ROME--A lady makes love while dogs of war roll over and play dead.

THE SHANNONS OF BROADWAY-- Vagaries of a vaudeville team turned host at a small town hotel.

THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA--Shaw revival eventfully acted by the Theatre Guild.

THE COMMAND TO LOVE--One of those continental trifles about the Seventh Commandment.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW-- Shakespeare supplemented by current clothes, radio, a carpet sweeper.

MUSICAL

Songs sifted with wit and wiggles: Manhattan Mary, Hit the Deck, A Connecticut Yankee, Funny Face, Chauve-Souris, Good News, The Mikado.