New Plays in Manhattan

This Man's Town depicts an unhappy New Year's eve as manifested near a lunch wagon in a red-light district. The author, Willard Robertson, appears as a good-natured, dirty-aproned counterman who shoves the mustard pot with unerring accuracy and can never remember in what town the significant episodes of his life occurred. Troubled by rumors that his girl is living loosely, he remarks: "I been layin' awake for weeks hopin' she'd say something in her sleep." During the evening a policeman is riddled with a machine gun at the wagon's door, a pickpocket is apprehended and has his wrist deliberately broken by his captors, and the dope-peddling Italian proprietor of the wagon is shot down by the wife of an associate whose life he had threatened.

Playwright Robertson's melodrama follows the prevailing modes of theatrical violence; at times the stench of the underworld pervades his scenes, although he achieves not quite such horrid insinuations as those conveyed by the derbied, white-faced gunmen in Ernest Hemingway's short story classic of lunch-counters and racketeering, "The Killers." But Robertson's comedy is far above par; in his own chatter and the comments of a crowd of rubberneckers gathered about the murdered detective, his idiom bears comparison with that of the great Ring W. Lardner. When the play is not vicious, it is continuously funny.

Penny Arcade. The average theatre audience applauds a scenic novelty no matter how realistic and unimaginative it may be. This was twice demonstrated last week; once at This Man's Town (see above), again at Penny Arcade. The setting of the latter is indicated by its title-- a gaudy pavilion with a waxen Hindu dummy in a glass case dispensing prophecies on pasteboard, and a lot of cumbersome crank machines showing moving pictures of stout ladies in their lingerie. On one side are hot dog and penny-pitch booths, on the other is a cheap photographer's studio. High above loom the mazy timbers of a scenic railway.

This is the background of a very ordinary melodrama in which one racketeer shoots another and the blame is almost fixed on a thug who wants to get married and reform. There is a conventionally kind-hearted police officer; a mother (the arcade proprietress) who will do anything to save her wayward son; and a harsh, wisecracking ingenue of the half-world. Deprived of Cleon Throckmorton's literal setting (arcade equipment supplied by B. Madorsky of Brooklyn), the play would provide nothing of unusual interest.

Love, Honor and Betray. The imported trappings of this offering, adapted by Frederic & Fanny Hatton from the French of Andre-Paul Antoine, hang upon it like a pall. Despite the seasoned services of Actress Alice Brady, it becomes apparent that a French hack can be as stupid about sex as a Broadway hack. In a graveyard, the ghost of a young man arises at sundown; his history is then exposed--he shot himself when the girl he wanted to marry demonstrated her love for his money. The next ghost-story is that of a portly millionaire who did marry the girl, was repeatedly cuckolded, and died of panic when it seemed that she would not relieve him by going away with lover No. 13. Third ghost-story is that of No. 13 himself--a handsome fellow who began to have tickling sensations on the soles of his feet after he had loved the woman long and ardently, who died of exhaustion after being dissuaded by her from taking a rest cure. Finally, on All Soul's Day, the woman herself arrives at the cemetery to place flowers on her husband's grave. She now covets her chauffeur, but age tells and he is captured by her daughter who, unlike her mother, is willing to marry a pauper. At this point a great deal of hollow laughter emerges from the three tombs and the fantasy is completed. Neither penetrating nor amusing, its chief contribution is physiological.

The Blue Ghost. Contrary to the expectations of numerous dramatic idealists, there will probably be several plays next season in which a Negro menial gibbers and quakes while a crew of off-stage technicians produces a lot of phosphorescent effects in a set representing a lonely mansion by the sea.v But The Blue Ghost is the only play of this genre now to be found on Broadway and dramatic idealists confidently expect that there will shortly be none at all.

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