The Reign of Good Old Nick

By T.E.Kalem

THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart

Alexander Woollcott, critic, lecturer, radio raconteur, died in 1943 but he has never passed away. The reason is that his friends Kaufman and Hart renamed him Sheridan Whiteside and painted an indelible portrait of him in his primary colors--venom, egocentricity and gush. Ever since this farce-comedy opened in 1939, it has induced fits of manic laughter.

The present revival at Manhattan's Circle in the Square Theater is a gutsplitter. An accident immures Whiteside (Ellis Rabb) in an upper-middle-class home in a Midwestern backwater town. From his imperial wheelchair he plays an epigrammatic Nero to the hapless inhabitants. He forbids his hosts to use the telephone, tries to sabotage the love affair of his selfless secretary (Maureen Anderman), and makes his nurse rue the day that she first heard of Florence Nightingale.

The names Whiteside calls people are intermingled with the "names" who call. "Gertrude Stein" phones from Paris. "Admiral Byrd" sends along some penguins from the South Pole, and "William Beebe" an octopus. Swift visits are paid by "Harpo Marx," played by Leonard Frey, and "Gertrude Lawrence" -- a performance by Carrie Nye that rates 10 on a Richter scale for actressy amorous bitchiness.

Only Rabb falters a trifle in making Whiteside more of an imp than a monster. Monty Woolley, who originated the role, was white-bearded and corpulent, a sort of malignant Santa Claus. Rabb reveals a trifle too much of the jolly rather than the Old Nick. -- By T.E. Kalem

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