New Plays in Manhattan

Adams' Wife-- They needed threshers on Jim Adams' Kansas farm when a city fellow named Peter Barrett (Eric Dressier) drifted in from the East. Jim Adams (Victor Kilian) liked the boy. took him into his family. Jim's wife Jennie (Sylvia Field) had already lost one baby, was expecting another. The first iS years of her life seemed a fair sample of what drudgery the rest of it was to be. She took a liking to Peter, too. So did a Negro named Joe. But Peter and his college book-learning and Jim Adams' dogged sense of fair play were not enough to keep a mob of Bible Belters from lynching Joe. Someone said that Joe had been caught kissing a white girl. As if the big lynching scene were insufficient drama for one evening. Playwright Theodore St. John sends his rural mobsters back to Adams' place a second time. They now want to settle with the city fellow for making up to Adams' wife. But stout Farmer Adams gets out his gun, settles his own particular triangle in his own particular way. Constructed and executed with sympathy and clarity, Adams' Wife is a play for you to see if you are interested in serious drama of the U. S. rural scene. Experience Unnecessary. It was the practice of Mr. Cameron (Walter Woolf), the rich motormaker, to go on vacation every year. A preliminary as inevitable as packing his bags was to advertise for a companion, pick out a good looking one, take her along for company, remunerate her handsomely. The lady who manages to get herself taken along on the journey with which Experience Unnecessary is concerned happens to be Mr. Cameron's executive secretary. She is lovely, cat-faced Veree Teasdale (The Greeks Had a Word For It). En route to Italy, and in fact throughout the duration of the trip, it looks as if Miss Teasdale were going to capitulate any minute. She does not. Swaying dangerously along its erotic tightrope, the play manages to keep Miss Teasdale pure enough until the ultimate chaste gold band is securely around her long third finger. Savage Rhythm. Nowadays it is hard to tell what the once happy-go-lucky Producer John Golden is going to serve up next. The scene of his latest presentation is laid in the Mississippi swamps, where Playwrights Harry Hamilton and Norman Foster would have you believe voodooism is still rife. Savage Rhythm has to do with a black girl named Miss Orchid, who has come home from a big theatrical success on Broadway. The Negro she chooses happens to be one her Sister Florabel is also fond of. Thereupon Florabel picks another man, an unfortunate choice because the other man's wife stabs Florabel. Then follow some of the liveliest obsequies to be seen on the stage since Porgy. Miss Orchid drops her city ways.succumbs to the ancestral voodoo call, turns into a priestess. That part of Savage Rhythm will probably lift you out of your chair.

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