New Plays in Manhattan

The New Yorkers. This show has a plethora of talent. There is Ann Pennington, Ted Waring & Pennsylvanians, Charles King, Marie Cahill, Richard Carle, Clayton, Jackson & Durante and blonde Frances Williams--not to be confused with blonde Hope Williams, who is also in the cast. The songs and lyrics were written by Yaleman Cole Porter, the scenery de-signed by Yaleman Peter Arno. Unfortunately, there are so many stars in the show that most of them do not appear as often as the audience might wish. Dancer Ann Pennington has only two small numbers. Hope Williams, appearing for the first time in musicomedy, sings but one song. But svelte Frances Williams ably croons "Go Into Your Dance," "I'm Getting Ready for You," "The Great Indoors," all of which are excellent. An abundance of rowdy comedy is supplied by Clayton, Jackson & Durante, who have some new material to add to their ever-welcome, hysterical acts, "Wood," "Money" and "The Hot Patata." Hoarse-voiced Jimmie Durante, as a college professor at Sing Sing, is advised by Hope Williams: "You've got to shoot your way to freedom!" Says he: "Who is this guy Friedman, a lawyer?" The New Yorkers provides a long and entertaining evening. Alison's House. Susan Glaspell has written a play about famed Poetess Emily Dickinson (1830-86) for Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre. Playwright Glaspell's Emily Dickinson is Alison Stanhope, who lived not in Massachusetts but in Iowa. However, both Alison and Emily made their trips to Washington, wrote poems to a hopeless love whose portrait hung above a desk, left memories jealously guarded by their families. The play opens 18 years after Alison's demise, on the last day of the last century. Alison's house has been sold, the family is moving out. Her relatives gather. All save one have denied themselves life, just as Alison had. After a good deal of melodrama, during which a doddering old aunt trys to burn the house down, a niece gets hold of a packet of Alison's poems-- the ones which tell of her thwarted love. The niece is the only one who has attained the freedom which Alison's poems sang about. After three acts she persuades the family that just as the dead poetess was always making little gifts to her intimates, so the poems should be made public as a gift from the dying century to the new.

Miss Glaspell's idea is a sound one, but although she has written a sensitive, charming play, it is tedious, overlong. Much of what Playwright Glaspell intends to be an atmosphere of intense nostalgia develops into mere vacuity. As usual, the Civic Repertory Theatre has given the play first-rate production.

A Kiss of Importance should please people who like quasi-sexual French comedy performed by excellent actors. It is tastefully done and venerable Frederick Kerr, 72, father of Geoffrey Kerr (London Calling, This is New York) gives the production a certain air of dignity. Admirers of the charming elder Kerr believe that if everybody grew up to be a septuagenarian like him, the world would be a better place. Included in the cast is Basil Rathbone (The Captive, The Command to Love), a handsome ascetic mummer. Along with Mr. Kerr, Actor Rathbone appeared in The Czarina and in the cinema Lady of Scandal. Also in the play, also fresh from Hollywood, is Montagu Love.

The play has to do with a French provincial politician (Mr. Love) who hires a young blade (Mr. Rathbone) to compromise the wife (Ann Andrews) of a crotchety old royalist (Mr. Kerr). In this way the politician will be able to marry the wife without the unpleasant notoriety which would ensue should he do the compromising himself. It is inevitable that Mr. Rathbone should fall in love with Miss Andrews, that Mr. Love should become irked, expose the scheme to Mr. Kerr, who has known about it all the time. Gracefully the affair is settled, Mr. Rathbone acquiring a racehorse in addition to the comely wife.

Overture is the posthumous play of William Bolitho (Ryall), a journalist whose hunger for ideas led him to attempt expression of baffling concepts. He died last June at Avignon, France, of peritonitis following an appendectomy which a War-time injury had made risky. While a lieutenant in the British Army, he and 15 companions were buried alive in a trench after a mine explosion. His companions died, he was unconscious for several weeks, hospitalized for a year. His play is in many ways characteristic of his life: tragic, bursting with inarticulated thought. The scene is laid in post-War Germany. A revolutionary group upsets the oldtime government of a little town. There are two leaders: an aristocratic adventurer (Colin Clive of Journey's End) and a communist (laconic Pat O'Brien of The Up & Up). There is also an idealistic exhibitionist (Barbara Robbins) who is loved by them both. Most potent part of the drama comes when the Putsch fails, each revolutionist faces death in a different way. Because of its inexpert dramatization, the play can be safely recommended only to Bolithusiasts.

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