New Plays

The Lullaby has a prologue and an epilogue which try to make a moral discourse out of a good play; it is sketchy, as must be any play with four acts and eleven scenes covering a span of 63 years; it might well be called Prostitute's Progress--every male character is a predatory weakling with the exception of two old men (one of them a priest), an organ grinder, " various Arabs " and other extras against whom nothing is proved.

The play begins a little creakily in a Norman village, where Florence Reed, a country Madelon of 17, is innocently undone by her young lover. As the play gains headway the creaks disappear. Miss Reed carries it on through the poverty and the fleshpots of Paris and the rural beauty of Barbizon to final disaster in colorful Tunis. But in her expert hands it is not the sordid story of the gilded lady nor the implausible tale of innocence defiled. Driven on by the necessity of providing for the child of her first misfortune, she gradually descends the ladder, innocence and chastity lost but the integrity of her personality maintained, until finally in the last act even that is sacrificed. A tragedy, yes. Terrible, yes. But sordid, no; for the audience carries away neither drooping despondency nor stiff self-righteousness. The art of Miss Reed's acting and the art of Edward Knoblock's play carry the day. The finest scene of all is the ultimate crash. It is the second* good play to reach Broadway this season.

New York Evening Post: "Strong drama . . . capital acting by Florence Reed."

Charles Darnton: "Mawkish and tedious. . . . All the characters are repulsive, and, worse still, uninteresting."

The Changelings. Mr. Aldcroft was a conventional husband with a radical wife. Mr. Faber was a new-fangled husband with an old-fashioned wife. So when Kay Faber, the Aldcrofts' daughter and the Fabers' daughter-in-law, attempted to elope with a villainous novelist, the Faber-Aldcroft family relation got snarleder and snarleder, and the conversation began to sputter with epigrams. The radical pair and the conventional one almost broke the usual traces to sympathize with each other; the state of marriage was dissected with a mordant scalpel. But finally all parties were reconciled, the young couple presented their respective parents with a grandson, and the author consoled his characters with Talleyrand's "Plus c,a change--plus. C'est la meme chose." Brilliant, intelligent comedy by Lee Wilson Dodd with an all-star cast, including Henry Miller, Blanche Bates, Reginald Mason, Laura Hope Crews, Geoffrey Kerr, Ruth Chatterton.

Alexander Woollcott: " A wise, good-humored comedy, which, after a provocative first act, becomes reduced to a formula and takes on the manner of farce."

Peter Weston. Peter Weston, self-made millionaire, tried to run his children as he had run his business-- by domination. He forced one son, a would-be painter, to go into the family pump-works, another away from idleness into advertising, and broke up his daughter's love-affair with her poor but honest sweetie on financial grounds. Of course, after that, things had to go wrong and they did. Son John was electrocuted for killing daughter Jessie's lover. Son James became an alcoholic; and daughter Jessie, though unwed, began sewing on tiny garments. So Peter was left a deserted, broken old man, to realize that pride goes before a fall. A forceful melodrama, smoothly played, starring Frank Keenan and displaying Judith Anderson as one of our best younger actresses.

Percy Hammond: " A brisk old-timer with modern frills."

Heywood Broun: " We don't think a play has any right to be as gloomy as Peter Weston without being a good deal better."

Chains. Three mountainous acts labor and bring forth the mouselike aphorism: "I wonder if, after all, morality isn't just a matter of viewpoint? "A nice mother's heart is lacerated and a slavish father's pocketbook insultingly proffered when their son's wild oat comes to light. The heroine, backed by an open-space brother of the slavish father, carries the day for righteousness with a fine mixture of scorn, patience, idealism. Few of the multitudinous lines are unfamiliar, yet Author Jules Goodman insists on driving the lot home with dogged repetition. Helen Gahagan is courageous under her heavy load. Katherine Alexander, as a young sister of the oat-sower, furnishes a few waking moments by some realistic flapping.

Percy Hammond: You can attend Chains and not feel that your Intelligence has been dishonored. . . . By far the squarest of this season's American plays."

The New York Call: "A platitudinous play as passe in subject as a speech on woman suffrage."

Music Box Revue. Another gorgeous spectacle--another moving curtain, this time a mermaid-one--much color--much beauty--only occasional lapses in taste--Grace Moore's voice --Florence O'Denishawn's dancing-- Frank Tinney--Josephy Santley-- John Steel--Florence Moore. And this time, praises be, a revue with at least three uproariously funny interjections: R. C. Benchley's inimitable reading of the treasurer's report; a skit entitled If Men Played Cards as Women Do; an operatic rendering of Yess, We Have No Bananas! In many ways easily the best of all the revues.

Greenwich Village Follies. A spirited, sumptuous display of color and talent with a good deal of extraordinary dancing to paprika it--two mirthful comic acrobats, the Mandells, Daphne Pollard, the laugh-provoking vaudevillian of the piece, some lavishly-staged song numbers, good voices, splendid direction, noteworthy speed. Not quite as laughable in its high spots as the Music Box.

*The first was Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary (Mrs. Fiske).