New Play in Manhattan

Swan Song (by Ben Hecht & Charles Mac Arthur; produced by John Clein) finds the authors of Twentieth Century and The Front Page collaborating on Broadway for the first time in seven years. But only as rewrite men. They have varnished up a thriller called Crescendo that thudded on the road last winter--and that is still dead wood.

Most of the evening is devoted to conversation (a handful of good Hecht & MacArthur cracks, a hunk of fancy chatter about psychiatry and art) and to pianoplaying. Twelve-year-old Jacqueline Horner plays Chopin and Mozart with precocious skill; but the concert by no means makes up for the claptrap.

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