New Plays in Manhattan

The Merry Wives of Windsor. Having toured the provinces for several monfhs in their genial reincarnation of Mr. Shakespeare's somewhat fleshly comic strip, Mrs. Fiske and Otis Skinner brought their efforts to Broadway for a limited engagement. Nobody could deny that Mr. Skinner was a sly and waggish Falstaff, nor could anyone suggest to Mrs. Fiske that the time had come for her to retire. All in all, their performance was good enough to make it clear that Shakespeare, when played at all, ought to be played in modern clothes and that a little less roguishness and a little more polish would have made this fairly funny comedy far more laughable.

The Schoolmaster. This is a feeble little comedy about old-time Hudson River Dutchmen. It is scheduled for two weeks in a small Manhattan theatre.

The Behavior of Mrs. Crane. It is perhaps as trying for an actor as it is for his audience to know that his appearance on the stage will immediately set the hearts of all its other occupants going lippity-lippity-lip, like Peter Rabbit, with love and excitement. If so, the quietly presentable John Marston has indeed been sorely tried this winter. In Behold, the Bridegroom, one taste of his fatal fascination had the effect of arsenic upon the heroine. Now, in The Behavior of Mrs. Crane, a polite comedy by one Harry Segall, he is called upon to act the part of Bruce King, just one of those men whom women cannot forget. The women, to be sure, are only two; Mrs. Crane and the temptress who has stolen her husband. Since wily Mrs. Crane has promised to give Mr. Crane his freedom in case he can find her a fitting successor to himself and since the appealing and wealthy Mr. King has been introduced with this end in view, it is right & fair that Mrs. Crane should love him at sight. But the fancy of the other lady, doubtless magnetized as much by the gold of which he is supposed to have large quantities as by the sterling qualities of his character, has lightly turned to thoughts of Mr. King. Mrs. Crane gets him, but only at the very last moment.

In addition to the winsome Mr. Marston, the cast of this play includes the Margaret Lawrence who has long been absent from Broadway, and the less famed but more beautiful and perhaps equally capable Isobel Elsom. Its production is lavish in all details. Yet, probably because characters in it are permitted to say, when on the point of departure, "Is it ... for good?" or to remark, brightly, about sugar, "A lump a "day keeps the levers away," The Behavior of Mrs. Crane is not really so very entertaining.