New Plays in Manhattan

The Silent House. The Chinese are a ghoulish people if one is to believe mystery playwrights. They gleefully eviscerate the noblest hero and burn the baby's eyeballs with a chuckle. An untruthful tribe as well, they are only exceeded in creating lies and tortures by the strange race of men who make up plays of mystery. Strive as one must to minimize their truthless horrors, one cannot escape, herein at least, their power.

Item: One mystery house in London.

Item: One faithful, if comic, Chinese servant.

Item: One faithless, if comic, British servant.

Item: One handsome hero who has just inherited the cursed mansion and $250,000 in bonds hidden therein.

Item: One indescribably cruel Chinese doctor, in search of the bonds.

Item: One heroine, white, heavily hypnotized by the Doctor.

Item: One murder as the curtain rises.

Item: More murders.

Item: One secret cabinet in the fireplace guarded by a snake, poisonous.

Item: One scene in which said heroine is beaten by a prizefighter to make her tell "all."

Item: One knife thrown in the hero's back.

Item: One torture chamber behind the glass door of which a heroine may be dissolved by horrible gases. But is not.

Item: One blissfully happy ending.

Such things are ghastly to contemplate. More ghastly here, perhaps, than in any other mystery play this season. As acted by a goodly troupe including Helen Chandler, heroine, Alan Dinehart, hero, and Clarke Silvernail, Chinese servant, they wring frightened yelps from a trembling audience. Mr. Silvernail's drolleries help to relieve tension at terror stricken moments. On the way home spectators can be heard boasting they didn't believe a word of it.

Meek Mose. Prevalent opinions among the hordes that hurry to the theatre include the firm feeling that each Negro is a great actor. All you have to do is put a string of lines into his head, point out the stage and let him live the part. This theory, arising from the efficiency with which Negroes strut in musical shows, was crystallized when the Theatre Guild made its first furore of the season with Porgy, played by an uncanny troupe of colored folk. There were murmurs in the shrewd recesses of the Guild at the time that a good deal of patient teaching had gone into that performance, more perhaps than was normally expended on the most colorless cast. But these murmurs were not news. Knowingly expectant people let themselves into the tiny Princess Theatre for the opening of a play written and performed by Frank Wilson, onetime Harlem* mailman, now title actor in Porgy. Otto Hermann Kahn was there, Max Reinhardt, Sculptor Jo Davidson, able Actress Thimig from the Reinhardt troupe and Mayor James John Walker. Between the acts Mayor Walker ambled nimbly to the stage and praised the piece prodigiously. Which may get him the Negro vote, but will not disguise the fact that Meek Mose, in acting and writing, was irreparably inept. It tells of an aged darky and the slap, slap, slap of life as he turned the other cheek. The inevitable chant of spirituals saved the night from utter rout.

Atlas and Eva. The best part of this play was the name, and that was changed on the eve of the opening. Under the fascinating title of The Nebblepredders it is reasonable to suppose that the incurably curious, a considerable group, would have patronized pasteboard peddlers.. But the reigning dynasty thought otherwise and just called it any old thing, spelled as above. The Nebblepredders were the family concerned--Pop Nebblepredder, Ma Nebblepredder, Herbie Nebblepredder, Eva Nebblepredder, Elmer Nebblepredder, Josie Nebblepredder--all Nebblepredders. A Nebblepredder, that is to say these Nebblepredders, were poor Nebblepredders. Their hope and true salvation was Elmer Nebblepredder, who earned $20 a week. Other Nebblepredders nibbled at his salary ceaselessly, particularly Ma Nebblepredder, whose false teeth took a $200 nibble and then wouldn't dent her edibles. The Nebblepredders household therefore was in a pretty needless state of meddling. Enormous difficulties, such as spelling Nebblepredder on the telephone, tumbled endlessly about their heads. Despite credible acting, the squabblings of so many nettled Nebblepredders were slightly sedative. No medals for the Nebblepredders.

Mrs. Dane's Defense. A new repertory company of able artists (Violet Heming, Alison Skipworth, Robert Warwick, et al.) revived as their first production this play of the yeasty '90's. As everyone over 40 knows and everyone who has ever attended a course on the drama can explain, this was a slashing play. Mrs. Dane was a fallen woman, and she lied about it--to preserve her place in suburban London society and to keep the young squib whom she loved. Such conduct was reprehensible, and the neighbors, including the ineffective young swain, felt obligated to expel her. Chastity went without saying in the '90's, until Playwright Henry Arthur Jones said several things about it defending Mrs. Dane. Reviews of the play were of two opinions. Older theatregoers remembered the sex dialectics of their youth. Young ones were mystified by a creed of elaborate duplicity. The play was an ambiguous first choice by the new company.

Rain or Shine. Joe Cook is a comic, worshiped not by his public but by his disciples. He is a comedian funny through the sheer disconnection of his dialogues. He tells unending stories with the eagerest conviction, no two sentences of which have the faintest rational relation. He wears no mad makeups, talks no dialects. He sings well enough, dances deftly, juggles Indian clubs, balances at the top of a 12 foot pole swinging hoops on his heels, walks a huge ball up a perilous incline and down the other side, whirls with his feet a heavy pole weighted with a man at either end, tumbles neatly, and catches lighted matches in his mouth. He might be compared to Douglas Fairbanks gone incurably insane. So unaccountable are his activities that some people trying to follow him, don't think that he is funny. They had best be absent from Rain or Shine. With meagre notable exceptions it is a wretched show. But for those who like Joe Cook it is heavenly ceremony.

*Centre of Manhattan's colored population.