Wickedness

Bad Plays Listed--The Managers Bulge

There can be little question of the morality of the American stage. John Roach Straton, Charles Sumner and the other "reformers" of this wicked world have precluded the survival of any element of general reputability in our amusements. Their activities have put SIN in the headlines and they find themselves powerless to take it out.

The theatrical managers have seized upon this national wave of immoral curiosity. They now have three ways (if one is to judge by fallible experience) of catching the communal eye of an avid but selective public. One is the judicious compound of the Semitic and the Hibernian*; another is the conservative use of the name Shakespeare; the third is the extravagant employment of courteous incontinence.

Observe, in support of the urge to vicarious immorality of the American nation, the following more or less popular plays: Rain, The Lullaby, Windows, Red Light Annie, Tarnish, The Dancers, Seventh Heaven, Chains, White Desert, A Lesson in Love, Casanova, The Crooked Square, Nobody's Business, The Shame Woman. All are at present discussing across New York footlights some element of sexual immorality.

Blue law agitators find the dust of the dramatic street walker a persistent irritant to the public eye. They maintain that tolerance has been instrumental in the retreat of the brassiere in musical revues and the advance of the shifty nifty. /-

Their opponents proclaim that Art and the public, hand in hand, are recipients of equal benefit. Art gains freedom of expression; the public is armed with facts to face a universal problem. With immorality out in the open even the dull-witted citizen can get a shot at it.

With the exception of a variety of indictments, hearings, and fines in the case of The God of Vengeance (an explicit display of sexual misdirection), the Manhattan municipal authorities are dormant. Meanwhile the managers' pockets bulge increasingly with purple proceeds.

The matter boils down to a question of Art as an expression of national impulse or of national consideration. At present the impulse remains financially dominant. The American public has evinced an increasing preference for the Devil over the deep blue sea of censorship.

W. R. & J. A. T.

The Best Plays

These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important:

Drama

CASANOVA--Since his memoirs are banned by the book censors the great philanderer must, perforce, make his bow to America across the footlights. Lowell Sherman is his living medium; Katharine Cornell, his vision of delight.

RAIN--Jeanne Eagels has virtually set herself up for life in the interesting business of discrediting South Sea missionaries.

SEVENTH HEAVEN -- A faithful soul, lifted by a wave of love off the reefs of despair, is deposited at last in the calm lagoon of love. Helen Menken is the star; War-time Paris, the locale.

SUN UP--Feudal hatreds of the Carolina mountains disappear before a primitive patriotism.

TARNISH--Severe discussion of the sex problem demonstrating that men are mostly to blame.

Comedy

AREN'T WE ALL?--One of those supremely smart trifles at which the English are inimitable. Cyril Maude is the chief trifler.

THE CHANGELINGS--The accident of birth is made the axis of a capable comedy. The roster of the cast reads like a benefit: Henry Miller, Blanche Bates, Ruth Chatterton, Laura Hope Crews, etc.

IN LOVE WITH LOVE--Essentially small beer made pleasantly stimulating by the performance of Lynn Fontanne.

MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY-- Mrs. Fiske is Mary; her contrariness is devised by St. John Ervine; and the whole is blended into being by David Belasco. The result is an exceptionally gracious comedy.

THE NERVOUS WRECK--Never a bedpost to tie the action to and yet the funniest farce since Fair and Warmer.

TWEEDLES--The protagonists of Seventeen in another of the same by Booth Tarkington.

WINDOWS--John Galsworthy, a little below his best, dissecting the emotions of a wayward girl in highly respectable surroundings.

Musical Shows

For those who seek their laughter set to music the following productions are particularly recommended: Poppy, Ziegfeld Follies, Music Box Revue, Wildflower, Greenwich Village Follies, Battling Buttler, Scandals.

* As in Abie's Irish Rose.

/- "Nifty" is a recently concocted slang term, synonymous to "wise crack," and meaning "joke."