New Plays in Manhattan

Man's Estate. Beatrice Blackmar and Bruce Gould have set down with strength and fidelity a story that is covered by millions of rooftops throughout the world-- the story of ambition fastened to earth by the inevitable tendrils of dependence. It is their first play and it has, here and there, the gaucheries of inexperience, but it seldom loses its hold on the fundamental truth on which it is based--the fact that, in the curiously woven pattern of human life, there is no such thing as independence.

The story is as simple as life itself seems to be. A Midwestern youth who wants to be an architect takes his greatest satisfaction in the fact that he is free, that he may defy his drab background, and do as he pleases in becoming great. Then, one moonlit night, a girl's arms fasten him, innocently, generously, but so tightly that he can never escape. He tries, of course, but finds that his ambition has been diluted by emotion. He settles down in the environment he hates, trapped, but sure that he will not vegetate as all the others have done before him, as even he is beginning to do as the final curtain falls.

The foregoing may suggest that Man's Estate is a man's play. It is not. Earle Larimore gives an acutely sympathetic portrait of the beaten youth, but the story mounts to its second-act crescendo through the beauty of Margalo Gillmore's portrayal of the girl who, without wanting to, draws the youth back into the shadows of mediocrity. There are other excellent performances by Edward Pawley, Dudley Digges, Elizabeth Patterson and Armina Marshall. Mr. Digges also is to be credited with the direction. The production is flush with the Theatre Guild's usual high level.

Margalo Gillmore, daughter of Frank Gillmore (one of the founders and now President of the Actors' Equity Association), began her stage career in 1917 after a course at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She was second woman in a Scrap of Paper, The Famous Mrs. Fair, Alias Jimmy Valentine. She jumped into headlines with Richard Bennett in He Who Gets Slapped. In the last two years she has been a member of the Main Acting Company of the Theatre Guild. Unmarried, she has an apartment of her own and likes contract bridge, cats (three at present), golf, swimming.

Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh. So few playwrights have ever caught the evanescent quality that is the essence of Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske's acting that she is scarcely to be blamed for reviving a play from her past instead of trying to find and create something new. And, everything considered, this oldtime vehicle is as good as any to bring a very fine actress back to New York. It is obvious and it is awkward but it is also amusing, even after 18 years. The story is that of the daughter of a patent-medicine faker, who attempts to scale the social heights. She is particularly eager to bring about the marriage of her sister to wealth and position but is unable to devote her entire time to this object because of the necessity of spending some of it correcting her mother's grammar. Mrs. Fiske returns to her old role with all the vivacity of a young and eager actress and does not hesitate to make use of the broad clowning and reversible inflections that were considered high technique in 1911. Her performance is glowingly amusing. In addition there is a brilliant bit of character acting by Sidney Toler as a tombstone salesman.

Paolo and Francesca. As a picture, perhaps, with its conventional figures appearing in stained glass colors, this 32-year-old idyll by Stephen Phillips may have a place in dramatic history. However, its lack of semblance to life makes its revival now by so fine an actress as Jane Cowl a little difficult to understand. To interest the modern playgoer in the doom of these two familiar poetic figures, a little more of Dante's fire is needed.

The story of the star-crossed love of Paolo for his brother's wife has, however, a certain static lustre in the Phillips version, and Miss Cowl is radiant in her picturization of what is, after all, a minor role. Philip Merivale is a simple and direct Paolo and Guy Standing gives to Giovanni all the sinister quality the verse will allow. Katherine Emmet's Lucrezie also is excellent. But it is not easy to imagine anyone becoming excited enough about it all to telephone his favorite ticket speculator.

Bird In Hand. Playwright John Drinkwater heretofore has dealt chiefly with such authentic characters as Abraham Lincoln, Mary Stuart, Oliver Cromwell, Robert E. Lee. It is strange but not unsatisfactory to see him turn now to less historic folk, men and women who are caricatured for the sake of a good time.

Bird in Hand, named for the Gloucester inn in which it takes place, contains the slight story of a romance which is opposed by the girl's father on the rather unusual ground that he does not want her to marry above herself. It is, so far as plot goes, thin fare, but Mr. Drinkwater has thickened it with some highly diverting comedy so smoothly played that it does not seem extraneous. The entire cast has been brought from London, where the play has run a year, and is considerably more than adequate. Ivor Barnard and Herbert Lomas are particularly skilful; Jill Esmond Moore, particularly decorative.

Under the Gaslight. Since Christopher Morley and his three colleagues discovered, at their stunt theatres in Hoboken, the awkward charms of the dramas of the '60s, there has been a general scramble for these dusty manuscripts. This one is an Augustin Daly play, first produced in 1867, and, to make it just a little quainter, an old theatre in the Bowery has been resuscitated to house it.

The play is thoroughly preposterous, strewn with woe and valor and long-winded speeches about each. It reaches its one dramatic, now highly amusing, climax when a near-hero is tied to the railroad tracks, to be rescued when the heroine smashes her way out of her freight-house prison with an axe and reaches him just before a cardboard locomotive trundles by. It is acted with true old-fashioned fervor by a cast which enters into the spirit of the occasion with a rush. Earl Mitchell is particularly convincing as the deep-dyed villain and whole-souled performances are contributed by John Ferguson, Helene Dumas, Ella Houghton. It is good fun if you feel like hissing, cheering and stamping your feet unrestrainedly. Next door there is a brass-railed Bowery bar.

Music in May. All the traditions of the once extremely popular comic opera are fulfilled in this importation from Vienna. There is a Bavarian prince who falls in love with the daughter of an umbrella maker. There are plenty of students about to break into melody at the faintest hint of a song cue. And there is the sputtery gentleman who provides the comedy. It is all very well done, with a rousing score, and bright contributions by Solly Ward, Gertrude Lang, Bartlett Simmons, Greek Evans. Best song: "Unto Your Heart."

He Walked in Her Sleep is the sort of labored farce that gives indications, occasionally, of becoming amusing, but never does.

Mystery Square. The original idea was to dramatize Robert Louis Stevenson's eerie tale, The Suicide Club. But the authors evidently were not content to use the device of building crescendo by the steady growth of suspense, so they introduced shrieks, hysterics, faints, shots in the dark. The result is a conventional thriller which Stevenson, were he in the habit of haunting Broadway, would never recognize. The cast is competent enough, especially Gavin Muir, Hubert Druce and Marie Adels, but the general result is more mysterious than was intended.