New Plays in Manhattan

A Wonderful Night. Best known of Johann Strauss operas is Die Fledermaus (The Bat), which has been presented to various English-understanding audiences as Night Birds, The Merry Countess and is now offered by the Brothers Shubert under a persuasive title which suggests a Shubert burlesque or a cheap cinema. Since the humor--depending on a husband's seduction by a masked beauty who turns out to be his wife--is not certainly apparent to modern audiences, other Viennese values must be emphasized. Chief among these, of course, is the music, which the Shuberts have duly honored by hiring a large and expert orchestra. An opulent mood is induced simply by the massed viols intoning the surging Straussian melodies.

Prima Donna Gladys Baxter has a bounteous voice and sings a czardas with considerable fire. In the last act the Shuberts, unable to suppress their vaudeville, interpolate a comedian named Solly Ward who tells time by the number of cats in the backyard and, observing six, declares it to be "five after one." But these gaucheries and the stiffness of many of the cast may be forgotten if you submit yourself to the best musical score on Broadway, the creation of a little Austrian kapellmeister whose farewell concert in London (1849) was followed by a triumphal exodus on a fleet of barges down the Thames when he heard, for almost the last time, the strains of his own "Blue Danube" ringing in his ears.

The Ghost Parade recounts some of the perplexities which confront the British Army in India, including a cabal who dress up as spooks in order to smuggle firearms to the natives, and an unpleasant Hindu who, instead of being the villain as no one had suspected, is really Cyril Teetarn, detective. It is a venture in more than one way distressing.