New Plays in Manhattan

Sweet Chariot. The first act of this play was unmistakably suggested by the life of Marcus Garvey, discredited Negro leader, dreamer of black glories in Africa for himself and his U. S. following (TIME, Jan. 11, 1923; Feb. 16, 1925)-- The remainder is purely fictional. Marius Harvey (Frank Wilson) and his associates have planned a Back-to-Africa movement for Negroes, chartered boats, expecting to make money on the scheme. But when Marius Harvey assembles his clients in a hall to tell his plans, his eloquence carries him away, he becomes spiritually involved in the mission of leading his people back to the promised land. This scene stands out as an impressive bit of acting.

When the expedition reaches Africa it has a hard time finding any land to colonize, at last settles on a strip of jungle-fringed seacoast. Meantime Harvey's sly companions spread unrest in the group, most of them leave. In the end it develops that the land is already a British possession. Defeated, cast off by all save a mulatto girl, Harvey realizes that the only reason she has stood by him is because she is not pure Negro but part white. Actor Wilson's role is played with earnestness and fervor, but the play has not been written well enough to bring out its brilliant possibilities.

Sisters of the Chorus. Sophisticated Theophile Gautier once said that the only thing one could not exhibit on the stage was a pot de chambre. The chief distinction of Sisters of the Chorus, another theatrical attempt to romanticize the lives of thugs and their lady friends, is that just such a utilitarian object is within full view of about one-half of the audience, the play's humor springing largely from the fact that a bathroom opens on the principal scene. There is a good deal of tedious talk about the nefarious ethics and business conduct indigenous to "Broadway."

His Majesty's Car. Lily Dornik (Miriam Hopkins) little suspected that when her journalist boyfriend took her out for a motor ride the vehicle would be one which was about to be delivered to her country's King. Nor did she understand why people suddenly became so nice to her, until the reporter broke the news: seeing her in His Majesty's car, everyone thought she was the royal mistress. Reluctantly Lily Dornik agrees to capitalize her position, rises to fame & fortune. Naturally no one says anything about her to the King. But one day, incognito, he drops in on her and they fall in love. It having been previously planted that she cannot hope for the King to marry her; one supposes that the happy entente that comes with the final curtain will be a charming but amoral one.

The clothing which saucy Miss Hopkins displays in His Majesty's Car is conspicuously chic, but by no means so revealing as that in which she disported herself as Kalonika in Lysistrata. Yet the Hopkins charm is undiminished.

Miriam Hopkins came from Savannah, Ga. but only rarely does her cracker accent slip out onstage. Her original intention was to become a dancer, but she broke her ankle after appearing in the first Music Box Revue. His Majesty's Car is her twelfth theatrical engagement, including one year with the Theatre Guild. She has no hobbies, one wirehaired fox terrier, one husband--Playwright Austin Parker (Week End), Cornellian, Wartime ambulance driver, flyer in the Lafayette Escadrille. She looks girlish onstage, thirtyish off (exact age secret).

Pagan Lady. This is the first time in 13 years that bushy-haired, voluptuous Lenore Ulric (Tiger Rose, Kiki, Lulu Belle, Mima) has not appeared under the aegis of Producer David Belasco. Gossipists have assumed that the reason for the rift is that Miss Ulric was unwilling to appear in the current Belasco offering, Dancing Partner, that the memory of unsuccessful Mima still rankles. But tradition dictates that any Belasco star who marries automatically leaves his service.* Pagan Lady is Actress Ulric's first vehicle since she was wed to Sidney Blackmer.

There apparently is very little field for invention once a playwright has started out to write a show about a minister and a bad girl. One can generally count on a second act curtain in which the minister, having visibly weakened in his fight against the devil and his pomps during Act I, abandons himself to the delights of the flesh. Examples: Romance, Rain. The scene of Pagan Lady is laid in Florida, in a little town to which a convention of preachers has been attracted. One of the divines is Franchot Tone, a capable young man recently admitted to the Theatre Guild. Mr. Tone meets Lenore Ulric, a hijacker's property, and they struggle through a jerky love affair. Occasional advice is given by a worldly doctor, Leo Donelly, who even goes so far as to prescribe Miss Ulric for Mr. Tone as a remedy for his anemia and general rundown condition. Only new angle which Pagan Lady contributes to this genre of the drama is that although the preacher and the girl have to give each other up in the end, each has derived peace and satisfaction from the relationship.

This One Man. Marvin and Saul Holland were brothers and burglars. Marvin was weak, tender, soulful. Saul was strong, crude, tough. Marvin saw that if Saul had his characteristics he (Saul) would be an extraordinary person, more particularly a better husband to his wife. So one night when Marvin and a friend were cracking a safe, Marvin shot and killed the master of the house. Executed in the electric chair, Marvin somehow managed to transfer his soul to Saul, who thereupon became possessed not only of strength but of sensibilities.

That such a dramatic idea is difficult to convey to an audience is at once apparent. Playwright Sidney R. Buchman is never able to make his theme articulate. But Actor Paul Muni (Wisenfreund)--"The Man of 1,000 Faces"--pumps life into the character of sturdy brother Saul.

Muni Wisenfreund got a name for himself when Producer Sam Harris discovered him, presented the opportunity for his first successes in We Americans and Four Walts, in Seven Faces, a cinema (TIME, Nov. 25, 1929), his work was chiefly memorable because of the fact that he acted seven parts.

Canaries Sometimes Sing. Frederick Lonsdale, who wrote Canaries Sometimes Sing, himself sometimes chirps bright little upperclass comedies (The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, Aren't We All, The High Road). But his latest work is eminently unsuccessful. Perhaps the trouble is that plays which have very small groups of characters never seem to rise above the category of tour de force. Canaries Sometimes Sing has four characters: a playwright and his unpleasant wife; his friend and the friend's jolly French wife. After a weekend party at the friend's home (which lasts four weeks), the playwright, the friend and the friend's wife decide to go off and live together, abandoning the fourth member of the cast as unworthy. The show is prefaced by a trying interlude wherein the dramatist apostrophizes a bird in a cage, exceedingly old theatrical business.

Blackbirds of 1930. Best that can be said of Blackbirds is that it contains Ethel Waters and the team of Buck & Bubbles, who perform lackadaisical feats on a piano and dance as if the floor were a drumhead, their feet drumsticks.

*To Marcus Garvey, 53, exiled from the U. S., in Kingston, Jamaica, was born, two months ago, a son.

*Others: Leslie Carter, Blanche Bates, Frances Starr, Katharine Cornell, Mary Ellis.

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