New Plays in Manhattan

Tovarich (by Jacques Deval, adapted by Robert Emmet Sherwood; Gilbert Miller, producer) has in the past three years won acclaim in 24 European cities, where it has been played 15,000 times. This would argue that mankind, in the theatre, remains incorrigibly reactionary, for Tovarich is a pleasant, sentimental, old-fashioned comedy whose theme concerns the dignity with which two impoverished members of the Russian nobility undertake menial work to make a living. Tried & true though the material may be, no show of Tovarich's type was ever presented with more grace and humor.

Most of Tovarich's grace can be attributed to the pair who impersonate the reduced Russians, a U. S. citizen named John Halliday and an Italian citizen named Marta Abba. Actor Halliday gives an excellent performance as Prince Mikail, the gentle and gallant ex-officer of the Tsar who was entrusted by his sovereign with 4,000,000,000 gold francs just before the fall of the Winter Palace. The money was to be used, at the Prince's discretion, for the best interests of Holy Russia. Years later, Prince Mikail is living in a Paris garret, down to his last 100-franc note and about to be dispossessed, but with the Tsar's 4,000,000,000 francs still intact. "Oh God," he tells his wife from the depths of a large, soiled bed, "it is good to be Russian ! We are so sad !" His wife, the Grand Duchess Tatiana (Marta Abba), is no less indomitable. She steals food from the neighborhood grocer with a facility which can be explained only by the fact that God is a Russian. When this tattered and charming couple learn that the French Government, not God, has been averting the eyes of the groceryman, Prince and Grand Duchess go into service as butler and maid to a banker's family.

The humor in the English version of Tovarich, first written in French by the author of Her Cardboard Lover, is supplied by one of the surest writers of comedy on the U. S. stage, Robert Sherwood. An old hand with the antics of spurious and genuine noble folk (Idiot's Delight, Reunion in Vienna), he has not failed to exploit the full nostalgia of the Prince's and Duchess' pre-War glory, to contrast their conduct with that of their employers, and to point up the play's one sombre occurrence: the reunion between the nobles and Red Tovarich (Comrade) Gorotchenko, who once violated the Grand Duchess and who now wants her husband to give him the Tsar's gold to save Russia's oil fields from foreign development. Spectators may anticipate a happy ending. Producer Miller (Victoria Regina) may expect the golden fruit of another of his polite, well-mounted, well-deserved successes.

Marta Abba chose the U. S. as one of the last theatrical worlds to conquer. Leaving the Milan Theatrical Academy in 1923, she was soon spotted by silver-whiskered Nobel Prizeman Luigi Pirandello, who gave her the lead in his Six Characters in Search of An Author. She has since done practically the whole library of the great theatrical metaphysician's plays, two of which are dedicated to her. In Europe and South America in the past decade Actress Abba's long, sensitive face, throaty voice and pleasantly awkward gestures have been seen in a repertoire ranging from As You Desire Me to The Cricket on the Hearth. For the Sherwood version of Tovarich she not only learned English but acquired a slight Russian accent.

Actress Abba explains her success thus: "I am like a radio, a radio, that's what it is, is it not? I reach out and everything comes to me, and I am the receiver, and so I am sensible, is it not that? I feel the audience."

And Stars Remain (By Julius & Philip Epstein; Theatre Guild, producer). In Scene II of this bright confection, Clifton Webb, cast as a Sutton Place flaneur, sinks back into a sofa and murmurs to a young woman who wants to take him to a party at Southampton: "I am 32, my dear. My dancing days are over." If imperturbable, emaciated, 45-year-old Mr. Webb's dancing days are indeed over, it will be a bitter blow to those who recall with pleasure his slick gyrations in Sunny, Three's A Crowd, Flying Colors, As Thousands Cheer. In the case of And Stars Remain, however, the revue's loss is definitely the drama's gain, for Webb has the best Oxford accent that ever came out of Indianapolis, the most ingratiating stage personality to be rescued from musicals since Magician Fred Keating was coaxed away from his collapsible bird cages.

In And Stars Remain Actor Webb, with infinite boredom, takes part in a great deal of vague talk about a hypothetical New York State political situation, in which the forces of Cynthia Hope's (Helen Gahagan's) grandfather, a die-hard Republican out to smash a pack of radical cubs at the polls, are lined up against the faction of Frederick Holden (Ben Smith), who thinks grandfather and his allies are sociological contemporaries of the brontosaurus. A lazy neutral, Actor Webb twits grandfather's associates by inquiring if they think it quite sanitary, not to change their convictions more than twice a year. For the lower orders he has no more reverence, observing that a hammer murderess has got exactly what she deserves--three weeks in vaudeville.

Consensus on the first play of the Guild's 19th subscription season seemed to be that the Twins Epstein could write dialog as witty as S. N. Behrman's, but were inferior to that oldtime Guild playwright when it came to the passages intended to convey deep social significance. A minority, not impressed by either Behrman's or the Epsteins' parlor politics, was inclined to call honors about even.

Daughters of Atreus (by Robert Turney; Delos Chappell, producer) is a high-minded, somewhat arty, occasionally tedious and pictorially beautiful synthesis of several Greek legends of family murder, with each of its three acts corresponding to a whole play as handled by Euripides and Aeschylus. It is the first produced play of Author Turney who. now nearing 40, is reported to have nursed its idea ever since he left Columbia University. In the part of Clytemnestra it presents, in her U. S. debut, a German actress of considerable reputation named Eleonora Mendelssohn.

As Mr. Turney tells the story, the priest Calchas (Harry Irvine) is clamoring for a ''holy war" to rescue divine Helen from Troy, but the gods will not let Troyward winds blow until the unclean house of Atreus is purged by sacrifice. Iphigenia, daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, is lured to Aulis in the belief that she is to wed Achilles, and Calchas there prepares to sacrifice her. Mad with grief when Agamemnon refuses to interfere, Clytemnestra blasphemes the gods, calls Helen a whore, vows vengeance upon her husband. When Agamemnon returns from Troy after 1,007 days, his son Orestes is a curly moppet, his daughter Electra (Joanna Roos) a grown girl. His wife has taken Aegisthus as her lover, is quick with his child. Clytemnestra hacks Agamemnon to death in his bath; Electra recovers his body from a dunghill and buries it. In the last act Orestes returns from exile to slake Electra's brooding hatred by killing his mother, a pasty-faced harridan with a red wig over her grey hair. When the play ends the Furies are already making Orestes swish his sword at phantoms.

Mr. Turney's studiously poetic dialog lacks the full-blooded majesty and thunder that would have enabled it to prevail against the magnificent settings of Jo Mielziner. And Actresses Mendelssohn and Roos, playing their parts like transplanted Lady Macbeths, reduce the play to the proportions of a family feud among the Borgias.

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