New Plays in Manhattan

THE THEATER

Three's a Family (by Phoebe & Henry Ephron; produced by John Golden) assumes that the current increase in the birth rate, when translated into farce, means the more the merrier. To a middle-aged couple's small apartment comes their daughter (whose husband is in the Army) and her baby. No sooner has the household been converted into a nursery than the couple's son and imminently expectant daughter-in-law arrive to turn it into a delivery room. Another set of prospective parents also pay a call, but obligingly scram before the place becomes an out-&-out maternity ward. Between whiles there are some highly transient maids, some escapist drinking by the long-suffering older folk, and a sour maiden aunt who, deprived of her bed, is forced to take cot luck in the living room.

Spotty and somewhat static, Three's a Family too often repeats its good jokes, half-kills their effect with bad ones. But it has its very funny moments. Really hilarious is a scene where a half-dead, three-quarters blind old baby doctor (well played by William Wadsworth) gropes his way around the apartment, diagnosing by ear.

Sons and Soldiers (by Irwin Shaw; produced by Max Reinhardt, Norman Bel Geddes & Richard Myers) trots out a lot o flossy china for a terribly bad dinner. Laid in 1916, it describes how a young bride for whom childbearing would be dangerous (Geraldine Fitzgerald) dreams the life of her unborn son (Gregroy Peck) all the way to 1942. It is a pretty hackneyed life most of the way -- a Tarkington childhood, a Scott Fitzgerald youth, a John Dos Passos coming-of-age ; and it halts on the tragic threshold of war. But the young bride decides to have a child nevertheless: whatever the risks for her and the penalties for him, life must go on.

Playwright Shaw's (Bury the Dead, The Gentle People) story of Everyboy is far too familiar to yield large stage dividends; simply told, however, it might have possessed warmth and humanity. But besides fancying it up as a constantly interrupted dream, Shaw has put frills on the dialogue, lace pants on the sentiments, and-- for extra tone -- he tosses in comments on Beethoven, Brahms, Renoir and Keats. Finally, even the point of Sons and Sol diers is feeble: for a real mother to affirm life after having lived it would mean something; but a young girl's affirmation, on the basis of her feverish dreams, lacks the authority of experience.

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