New Plays in Manhattan

Strike Up the Band will be popularly described in weeks to come as the latest Gershwin musicomedy, which means of course that Brother George Gershwin wrote the music, Brother Ira the words. The brothers are to be heard in their friskier vein--you will discover among their tunes no such aphrodisiacs as "Do It Again" and "The Man I Love." But they make you temporarily forget such omissions with their chipper satires ("Typical Self-Made American," "Mademoiselle from New Rochelle"), and there is one spasm of trumpeting ("I've Got a Crush on You") which threatens the Negro monopoly on berserker brass.

The plot involves a war between the U. S. and Switzerland caused by a tariff on milk chocolate, but the absurdities that you expect from this idea are never quite realized. Furthermore, the costumes were apparently designed by someone who realized that lengthier skirts were in order, even upon the stage, but did not know how to compensate for non-exposure. The settings exhibit various unhappy juxtapositions of color.

Bobby Clark, with his spectacles painted on his face, his trick cane and cigar, amuses those who think that the mock-pompous delivery of big words is funny. He reaches another sense of humor by announcing, before playing the piccolo: "There are only a few of us left." His partner, as usual, is the almost completely silent Paul McCullough, who is impelled by Mr. Clark's incessant talk to bury his head in a desk drawer ("Just getting a breath of fresh air"). These buffoons and Doris Carson, a very personable girl whose adroitness as a tap dancer is marred only by awkward elbows, are the chief contributors to a pleasant diversion which must still be mainly credited to the exuberant chord progressions of Brother George Gershwin, the deliberately bad or complex rhymes of Brother Ira. Nancy's Private Affair. Minna Gombell, a fulsome beauty, plays the heroine of this romance by Myron C. Fagan, in which a wife who has allowed herself the pleasure of wearing sturdy woolen stockings, comfortable sweaters and helpful horn-rimmed glasses, learns of an old necessity and reverts to fragile silk hose, mascara, rouge, lipstick, perfume, corsets and eye-strain for her husband's sake. This theme is presented with a truly incredible number of historic wheezes and situations.

Everything's Jake, a new comedy by genial Don (The Old Soak) Marquis, is, like most of his writings, pervaded with the persuasive odors of the barroom. It concerns the adventures of Jake Smith, wealthy Long Island 'legger, with his wife, daughter and three bleary cronies on an expedition to Paris. Playwright Marquis devises considerable fun with the vagaries of ignorant and besotten men in contact with an approachable countess and a haughty courtesan, but most of his intended climaxes are weak, he never gets very far from orthodox, outworn farce.

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