New Plays in Manhattan

The Green Pastures. The black shepherds of the South make the Bible stories real to their flocks. Since the Southern Negro does not possess a learned, historic imagination, he envisions Scriptural events in terms of his own life. But the sinful city of Babylon is nonetheless real to him because he conceives it to have resembled a series of Negro nightclubs. Nor is the Lord God any less credible because he is imagined as working, like all important beings, in an office with a rolltop desk. From such humble visions, welling out of the fervid spirit of the black man. Playwright Marc Connelly, hitherto chiefly famed for his wit, has fashioned what is indubitably one of the most beautiful and affecting plays of recent years.

At a celestial fish-fry the Lord God, in the simple frock-coated image of a benignant Negro pastor, creates the world and leaves to inspect his handiwork, declaring, "I'll be back Saturday." Then are exhibited the careers of Adam and Eve, of Cain and of Noah, who is commanded to live aboard an Ark while a world given over to dicing, short skirts, and all manner of Evil is submerged beneath the floods. Years later the Lord God selects Moses to lead his people out of the land of Pharaoh. Pharaoh's palace is depicted as a glorified Negro lodge room with its various magniticoes attired in such lustrous raiment as Confederate uniforms and Scotch kilts. The walls are hung with crimson banners, like those in Sunday Schools, proclaiming the glory and power of Egypt in the best Negroid rhetoric. After Moses has been called to his heavenly home, the world is again steeped in sin. When the Lord God visits a jazz cellar in Babylon, so outraged is he that he repents of his creation and resigns mankind to perdition. But the prophet Hosea inspires faith in his followers together with sympathy born of suffering. Beholding his works, the Lord God's attitude changes accordingly, and, at another fish-fry within the pearly gates, he presages another attempt to redeem mankind.

There are 18 scenes, between each of which Hall Johnson's magnificent Negro choir intones a spiritual. The all-Negro cast perform with a combination of spontaneity, vigor, and accomplished artistry which exemplifies the race at its dramatic best. You will laugh at the ebony, tinsel-winged Angel Gabriel and at many of his heavenly associates. Other things may well make you cry. In any event you will be overcome by a reverence which can only be construed as a tribute to fine art, if, indeed, it is not a manifestation of more inscrutable religious impulses.

The Apple Cart. In the later years of his life George Bernard Shaw, his spirit and eloquence unimpaired, has relinquished Socialism and the kindred shibboleths of his younger days to make obeisance before his King and, by implication, every wise, considerate monarch who ever occupied a throne. The hero of the first Shavian drama in six years is Magnus, an English ruler of the future. Skyscrapers now loom above London; the betasselled chambers of Buckingham Palace have been renovated in the glass-and-metal fashions of the modernists; poverty has been eliminated, and all England is a jerry-built, bourgeois panorama.

King Magnus is confronted with the problem of controlling a Labor Cabinet, headed by crafty Prime Minister Proteus, which wishes to strip him of the last vestiges of kingly power--the right to speechify, to influence the press, and to veto acts of Parliament. In a long protest Magnus presents the Shavian conception of the worth of kings. The gist: When a nation is in the grip of demagogs and unscrupulous capitalists, stinking with the corruptions of Democracy, then only a monarch possesses the absolute authority necessary to scourge the offenders. All the superstition and submission necessary to support the structure of royalty is worthwhile if only because a good king can nobly mould his people with thou shalts and thou shalt nots. "The King stands for the external against the ex-pedient."

But despite these arguments the Labor Cabinet presses its ultimatum on King Magnus. Promising an answer later in the day, Magnus seeks diversion with a court lady (Violet Kemble Cooper) who is anxious to be the royal mistress. When he attempts to leave her, she restrains him. There is a tussle and the pair fall off their divan and roll over and over on the floor. After this shenanigan, Magnus enjoys another, an audience with Mr. Vanhattan, U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. This bombastic gentleman has come, panting, to announce that the U. S. wishes to reunite with England, to be another Dominion. But the King cannot hear of this; England is already submerged by U. S. capital and besides, as he later tells the Queen, Americans are merely "wops claiming to be Pilgrim Fathers."

When the Cabinet finally reassembles, Magnus informs them that he will abdicate, will then enter Parliament and become Prime Minister while his own son is King. So intimidating is the threat of this combination that the Prime Minister promptly tears the ultimatum to bits andthe monarchy is preserved.

Presented by the Theatre Guild, The Apple Cart is a boon to those playgoers who bewail a lack of mentality on Broadway. Even if you did not know its author, its continual effervescence of ideas would betray a lively, fertile mind working with mature artistry. It is dominated by the argumentative, talkative Shaw, rather than the startling, witty Shaw. But he has long since demonstrated that good talk can make good drama, and Shaw v. Democracy is additional proof. Tom Powers as Magnus is a suave, informal and extremely likeable monarch. The Prime Minister is splendidly acted by small, steely, pale-faced Claude Rains. The rest of the cast is admirable.

The Apple Cart is Shaw's 40th play. He worked on it at Ayot St. Lawrence, England, in his country house which is built on a turntable and revolves to follow the sun. It was produced first in Warsaw last June; later in Dresden (by Max Reinhardt) and London. As usual, Shaw is receiving the largest royalties accorded any playwright in the world--15% of the gross. Sir James Barrie gets only 12 1/2%. Constantly annoyed by demands for his autograph, Shaw now has his signature printed on cards for general distribution. He was recently heard to refer, characteristically, to "my extraordinarily fine plays."

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