New Plays in Manhattan

Counsellor-at-Law. Playwright Elmer Rice (born Reizenstein), was once a lawyer. He has now written a drama about a successful legal light named George Simon (Paul Muni). Mr. Simon, when the play begins, is sitting on top of the world but it so happens that he has a stain on his otherwise unblemished past. A kind man, he once framed testimony on behalf of a young fourth offender who would otherwise have gotten a life sentence in prison. An enemy of Lawyer Simon discovers this lapse, comes so close to ruining Lawyer Simon that Lawyer Simon is about to jump out of his window. In the meantime Mrs. Simon, a high born lady, has deserted her husband. Fortunately Lawyer Simon's amiable secretary gets back from the ladies' room in time, saves her employer from suicide. Also in the nick of time a millionaire's son kills Mrs. Simon, the erring wife. Lawyer Simon gets renewed faith in life and no little budding interest in his faithful secretary. Actor Muni turns in an extraordinary characterization. More than 20 mummers do their best. But Counsellor-at-Law remains prolix, unsifted, the work of a painstaking realist who refuses to trade significance for well-observed irrelevancies.

Here Goes the Bride-- Cartoonist Peter Arno of The New Yorker had an exciting time in Reno last summer. There will never be other than variorum accounts of the procedure, but at some time during his residence, scrawny Cornelius ("Neely") Vanderbilt Jr. chased Mr. Arno across the landscape with an unloaded revolver. Mr. Arno included no incident quite so funny in his Here Goes the Bride, which perhaps accounted for the fact that the show went into oblivion after seven performances, together, it was understood, with a sizeable amount of money amounting to six figures belonging to John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, Long Is land sportsman.

That the show was a failure was no fault of Bobby Clark & Paul McCullough, two droll fellows who make many spectators scream with laughter. Funny man Clark did his best to discard Mr. Arno's inane libretto, inject into the proceedings his own particular brand of in sanity. The simple burlesque business that Mr. Clark knows best consists chiefly in manhandling a cigar, shooting people with a trick cane equipped with a rubber-tube to blow smoke through, ogling all pretty girls through spectacles painted on his face, ranging rapidly about the stage at a half-crouch. All this Mr. Clark has done many times before with success. Bad press notices and the lack of any outstand ing talent other than Clark & McCullough put Here Goes the Bride into the past tense. But you will still hear dance bands playing some of the show's earful music : "Hello, My Lover, Goodbye," "Music in My Fingers."

The Laugh Parade is produced, staged, largely written by and for Ed Wynn. It presents the usual Wynnsome monkeyshines, Comedienne Jeanne Au-bert's thin little voice and chipmunk smile, and Cinemactor Lawrence Gray, behaving like a perfect little Hollywood gentleman. Indeed handsome Mr. Gray affords the only note of restraint to the show. Unconsciously he betrays an apprehension that someone in the cast may take advantage of his being a motion picture actor, start making fun of him. Otherwise The Laugh Parade goes its merry way without benefit of libretto or commonsense.

At one point particularly does Mr. Wynn, almost the only Jewish comedian who refrains from capitalizing his race, rise to appreciable heights. This is when he imitates a juggler of the Tony Pastor era, complete with silk tights and handlebar mustache. For incidental music he requests the orchestra to play "something in a jugular vein."

The divertissement also offers a perusable chorus and the usual handful of Albertina Rasch girls sheathed in silk who do jerky things with their middles, wildly shake their long bobs. There is good music: "Ooh, That Kiss," "You're My Everything."

Caught Wet, The young people of Rachel Crothers' comedy-melodrama are marooned at a very stuffy houseparty in a stormbound mansion on the Hudson. Owner of the mansion, a priggish young man named Vanderstyle, offers no other cheer than food and the privilege of admiring the ancestral treasures. Someone suggests stealing the $250,000 Vander-style pearls, returning them after the host has become properly exercised. Unhappily the pearls actually disappear. Everyone is suspected. The police are telephoned. But Caught Wet never really reaches a very high pitch of interest. To satisfy a melodrama audience nowadays you at least have to have a maniac or a ghoul about the house. And Miss Crothers' thief owns the pearls anyhow.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.