New Play in Manhattan

An International Incident (by Vincent Sheean; produced by Guthrie McClintic) is a first play by the foreign-correspondent author of Personal History and Not Peace But a Sword. It is not much better than a first play by anybody else. A comedy, it starts off with fair color in its cheeks, but gets paler and paler, and ends looking ghastly.

Concerned with a distinguished English lady of American birth (Ethel Barrymore) who returns to the U. S. on a lecture tour, the play complicates her progress by means of a young reporter who: 1) tries to make her socially conscious; 2) falls in love with her. When a cop bangs her on the head, she loses her interest in lecturing, and when her beau, a diplomatic bigwig, hurries over from London, she chucks her interest in the reporter.

Mr. Sheean writes amusingly at moments, and Miss Barrymore performs amusingly all evening. But it takes more than an incident--international or otherwise--to make a play.

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