New Play in Manhattan

Idiot's Delight (by Robert Emmet Sherwood; Theatre Guild, producer), though all about the next World War, is nothing so pretentious as the film of Herbert George Wells's Things to Come (see p. 43). Playwright Sherwood got a belly-full of fighting in the last War, is now afraid that another Armageddon is forthcoming. In the printed version of Idiot's Delight,* there is evidence that he had misgivings about his work's presentation before hostilities actually began. "What will happen before this play reaches print or a New York audience," says he in a postscript, "I do not know." That the nations of Europe still remained too scared or too smart to fight when Idiot's Delight appeared on Broadway last week must have gratified Robert Sherwood, Idealist, no less than Robert Sherwood, Showman.

Mr. Sherwood's views on world politics approximate those of a great body of contemporary writing men who habitually seek from their hearts instead of their heads the answers to pregnant questions arising outside their profession. As stated in the postscript, the lesson contained in Idiot's Delight is that ''by refusing to imitate the Fascists in their . . . hysterical self-worship and psychopathic hatred of others, we may achieve the enjoyment of peaceful life on earth rather than degraded death in the cellar." Happily, the solemn depths of this shopworn text are instinctively bridged by Mr. Sherwood's great gift for high comedy.

In a hotel on a mountain peak just inside the Italian border, an international collection of travelers are interned until Rome has time to see who is going to fight whom in an impending war. There are a pair of honeymooning Britons, a German scientist, a French Communist, all of whom give every evidence of being men of good will. There are also a French armament maker, his Russian mistress, Irene (Lynn Fontanne), a troupe of U. S. showgirls whom she calls "obvious little harlots," and their blatant but philosophical master of ceremonies, Harry Van (Alfred Lunt). When a nearby Italian airport provides the required military "incident" by sending planes off to destroy Paris, when England squares off against Germany, France against Italy, Russia against Japan, one by one the interned travelers break out their national colors. For some unindicated reason, the hoofer and the Russian girl remain critically aloof from the passions of nationalism. However, in an emotional outburst which turns her protector toward more sympathetic arms. Irene looks Heavenward, declares: "Poor, dear God! Playing Idiot's Delight. The game that never means anything and never ends."

Shortly thereafter Harry Van recalls that he and Irene once spent a night together in the Governor Bryan Hotel in Omaha. Neb. This reunion, plus some remarkable pyrotechnics indicating a bombing raid, ends the piece.

"It's positively Wagnerian, isn't it?" cries Irene, as the whole world starts toward annihilation.

"It looks to me exactly like Hell's Angels," says Harry.

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Hokum of the highest type has long been the priceless stock-in-trade of Robert Emmet Sherwood. Like all fictionists, he has perfected a basic story which serves as the standard framework of his profitable product. In a Sherwood play, the boy practically never gets the girl for keeps. But the lovers generally have a few final poignant moments together. Before Hannibal went back to Carthage in The Road to Rome (1927), he spent one night with Amytis. Before Archduke Rudolf Maximilian von Habsburg was rushed out of Austria in Reunion in Vienna (1931), he was vouchsafed an evening with his old girl, Elena. In The Petrified Forest (1935), Public Enemy Duke Mantee killed Alan Squier before he had done much more than nuzzle Gabrielle. What happens to Harry and Irene in Idiot's Delight is somewhat hazy, but it looks like immediate extinction for both.

Born in New Rochelle, N. Y. 40 years ago, lanky Robert Sherwood went to War with the Black Watch, returned to Harvard, where his wounds and gassing did not prevent him from editing the Lampoon with such success that Vanity Fair hired him as co-editor with Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker. Hopeful contributors to Life recall the macabre, unsmiling laugh, the generous good nature with which from 1920 to 1928 Editor Sherwood personally received their effusions. When he wrote The Road to Rome, Sherwood quit journalism for good. He published in Variety last week a notice that Harry Van was back in town under the management of "Al" Lunt.

*Scribner's--$1.

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