New Plays

Brook. This offering is described in the exterior electric illumination as an "unusual love play." This is only one-third descriptive; the event concerns love--but it is hardly a play and it is quite slavishly usual. It demonstrates in three acts that primitive love is more directly appealing than the civilized version.

The leading man seduces the leading woman--a primitive girl of the hills. His, fiancee thereupon arrives and is apprised of the situation. Then the girls begin to argue. The fiancee talks too much and too tediously. That was the best reason, as it appeared, why the hero finally ciiose the mountain girl.

None of the acting was distinguished, though Mary Carroll, as the daughter of the hills, carried the burden of the evening satisfactorily. George Thompson, her ancient father, proved the accuracy of the old descriptive ballad : "' Oh, mountaineers have furry ears . . ."

Little Jessie James (musical comedy). The deeper phases of the activity depend upon the memorable bandit character, Jesse James. The girl in the case is also a bandit--except that she wrecks trains of thought and dynamites dams along the canons of true love instead of bothering with the Union Pacific and the Shoshone.

The casting of the piece is a trifle uneven, but what two or three of the principals lack the chorus supplies. They are eight young women of apparently acrobatic ancestry. Their energy and smartly synchronized activity would suffice to vitalize the seventh Book of Caesar set to music.

The Woman on the Jury. When friends are gathered together in the name of courtroom melodrama one is bound to grant certain of the author's requests. One cannot protest that he has met the District Attorney so many times "before that he really would prefer a change; likewise the counsel for the defense; and the Irish detective. But the woman in the jury box is a newcomer, and for her sake it was that this program of events was scheduled.

The woman finds herself in a position to decide the fate of her lost lover's mistress, who has forgotten herself so far as to shoot the lover. Inasmuch as the jurywoman herself has, in the prologue, attempted unsuccessfully to eradicate the identical individual in much the same manner she finds herself, as the saying goes, in a dilemma. Her solution involves the detonation of a vast amount of emotional cordite.

Mary Newcomb is the lady of the title and she retired from the action with the majority of laurel leaves. Virtually unknown before the opening night, she took her place among our leading lady agonizers.

The New York World: " Just another murder trial play."

Alexander Woollcott: "Really superb work by Mary Newcomb."

The Breaking Point. Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart is responsible for this example of the cowhide drama. Out of her holster of dramatic tricks she has drawn a sheriff, a self-sacrificing female with crimson propensities, a leading man with amnesia. Her action takes off in the East and lands on a ranch. It is all naively melodramatic, thoroughly preposterous, terribly exciting.

It seems that the murder of a Western citizen has entirely slipped the mind of Dick (McKay Morris). He is disclosed quietly practicing medicine in a New York suburb without the vaguest idea of where he originated or who his papa and mamma happened to be. He encounters another accident which reopens the portholes of memory and promptly he embarks westward to clear it all away. There is the good woman and the bad woman. The bad woman proves the better of the two. The final act is concerned with straightening this knotted skein of circumstance.

Gail Kane struggles away with the severest section of the melodrama much as a one-night stock company might broadcast East Lynne. Mr. Morris manages particularly well with the amnesia, again proving that he is a leader among American stage males.

Percy Hammond: "Ripsnorting third rater."

Alexander Woollcott: "Mrs. Rinehart quite stretches herself out of joint."

The Good Old Days. Prohibition is making money for people other than the bootleggers. A. H. Woods (bedroom man) is one of the other people. He has sponsored a play which deals exclusively with the high alcoholic content of contemporary American existence.

Mr. Woods has gone out to the corner saloon and brought the entire establishment into his theatre. He has not only brought the establishment but he has brought a keg of the establishment's foaming stock in trade. As a result the audience sits with its eyes bulging and its tongue out. Mr. Woods' brass rail, Mr. Woods' beer and Mr. Woods' bartenders easily rank among the most powerful properties that have appeared on the stage of the season.

The plot, which isn't nearly so important as the bar room, attempts to prove that prohibition is an unfortunate addition to the burdens of society. The leading characters take opposite sides of the case and argue wildly through three acts of the most obviously amusing low comedy of which Broadway can boast. Particularly is George Bickle (by burlesque out of the Winter Garden) efficient throughout the whisky tenor of the play.

Percy Hammond: " A terrible play which will probably run a terribly long time."