New Plays in Manhattan

A Girl Can Tell (by F. Hugh Herbert) finds the author of Kiss and Tell and The Moon Is Blue at the same old stand, but with greatly lowered standing. In A Girl Can Tell, Playwright Herbert, still concerned with discreetly amorous young girls, is still dallying with dalliance, still writing under the sign of Virgo in the spirit of Capricorn. But this time his hand is tired, and his touch seems coarse.

This time a teen-ager's mother leafs back through her memory book to the scenes of her girlhood. In the old days (1936). Jennifer Goodall was besieged by all types and ages of suitors. She necked, under her father's eye. in the family parlor. She came away unscathed from a visit to a bachelor establishment, came back unscathed from a business trip to Chicago with the boss.

There is no doubting Jennifer's popularity, but no indorsing it either. She never seems very girlish or charming, nor can Janet Blair bring much beyond looks to the role. The play has bright moments and agreeable lines, but. for the most part, where it is not determinedly cute it is studiously carnal. It is perhaps enough by now that Mr. Herbert has turned youth into a commodity without also making innocence a gimmick.

Sherlock Holmes brought Basil Rathbone to Broadway in a role he has played countless times in movies and on radio. The play was not William Gillette's famous old warhorse. but a new and curious one by Ouida (Mrs. Basil) Rathbone. However it might strike Baker Street Irregulars, for Baker Street occasionals it had none of the thrills of detective drama, only the feeblest period charm, and mere hints of Holmes's personal glamour. A dull clutter of styles and stories, it closed after three performances.

Concerned chiefly with the theft of the Bruce-Partington submarine plans, the play bounced all over London before shifting to the Swiss chalet of Professor Moriarty (Thomas Gomez). Here Holmes and his great adversary were locked in that death plunge from which Holmes had later (in the face of a clamoring public) to be restored to life. The plunge mattered less in the present case, since Holmes was scarcely alive before. Actor Rathbone made a very recognizable but far from inimitable figure of him; in the script Holmes was not much of a brain, and in the acting he was not much of a personality.

So far as it came-off at all. Sherlock Holmes did so as a museum piece that was being gently spoofed. But the spoofing, unfortunately, came off only at moments: for the most part the play, however rife with crime, merely swirled with inaction. It was lavishly produced. As Irene Adler, Metropolitan Soprano Jarmila Novotna warbled arias; there was much social chatter, much wearing of evening dress, many period fripperies and titled ladies with pasts. As much as anything else, it seemed like a tedious drawing-room play, with a dead body in place of a butler.

Gently Does It (by Janet Green) is distinctly English playvvriting, less distinctly any one kind of English play. Sufficient murder is contemplated and committed to label it a thriller, and its chief character is ruthless and psychotic enough to be a proper basis for thrills. But Edward Bare is so set on getting on in life through wealthy women that the play--all the more for being talky-seems less concerned with crime than mere careerism.

Early in the play. Edward (Anthony Oliver) neatly does in his wife, only to find that financially he has done himself in as well. He sets out to recoup by courting and marrying a well-to-do ex-barmaid (vivaciously played by Brenda Bruce), but she proves more than a match for him. A third lady now crosses his path--a path that leads, after many turns, but to the grave.

Despite small virtues. Gently Does It falls sadly short--chiefly by falling between stools. The liveliest scenes--of marital life between Edward and the barmaid--are in plot terms the least in order, while the melodrama is severely rationed. And for a murder play, there is almost no sense of cat and mouse--something particularly needed when, right from the beginning, the cat is out of the bag.

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