New Play in Manhattan

Madam, Will You Walk was the last play written by the late Sidney Howard (They Knew What They Wanted, The Silver Cord). It was groomed for Broadway in 1939 but closed out of town. Last week it became the first play offered by the Phoenix Theater, a professional, well-heeled repertory group that, to avoid Broadway costs, will produce on lower Second Avenue. The stars this time are Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn.

The stars this time were also more propitious. Madam is a light philosophic fantasy, about equidistant between Saroyan and Thornton Wilder, yet with a flavor and philosophy of its own. It tells how, from a sense of guilt, Mary Doyle, the heiress daughter of "a Tammany grafter who died in Sing Sing," has turned recluse. Into her parlor steps persuasive Dr. Brightlee, whom the audience has no trouble identifying as the Devil. But this devil is for the most part on the side of the angels--on the side, at any rate, of the world's artists and individualists, of all who possess courage and resist conformity. Nor need they be potential Beethovens; he equally favors a hackie (Robert Emmett) who yearns to be a hoofer.

With Dr. Brightlee for escort, Mary agrees to a night out--one that begins romantically in Central Park and ends up wildly in night court. The doctor himself becomes smitten with Mary, but the cloven hoof, in the end, proves no match for the youthful hoofer. Picking up after a slow start, the play has enough bright remarks and gay incidents, enough humor, novelty and point of view for a refreshingly pleasant evening. This is true despite the fact that--though Actress Tandy makes a winning Mary Doyle--Actor Cronyn lacks the regrettable charm and dash of the Devil.

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