New Plays

The Show-Off. The glib title character is known to all of us, is part of most of us. So intent is he on making a good impression that he generally creates a bad one. He does not realize that people would concede him something in return for a larger concession of silence by him. He buys a $28 overcoat on a $32 salary, sweeps a girl off into matrimony in spite of her family, brings her back to live with her mother, penniless, in the same grand manner.

Borrowing a friend's automobile, he bucks traffic at Philadelphia's busiest corner. Result: one broken arm for a traffic officer, one damaged trolley car, one bent automobile, one gash on the brow for the showoff, one fine of $1,000 for his relatives to pay. "That's the law for you!" he comments. Reverses of fortune and a good lecture from a sister-in-law render him unabashed. At the end the author makes the show-off partly instrumental in bringing a fortune to the family.

Aubrey Piper is a form-fitting part for Louis John Bartels, a new and capital actor. Helen Lowell etches with acid the acrid mother-in-law. Regina Wallace and Juliette Crosby also give meritorious performances in a play that has a place in every home. George Kelly has written a more human document than his satire, The Torch Bearers. The play's constant humor gets under the vest.

Hey wood Broun: "Best of all American comedies--an authentic nugget in this the golden age of the American theatre."

Alexander Woollcott: "An extraordinarily entertaining comedy of Philadelphia folkways, a genuinely indigenous play of American life, salty, humorous, true."

Alan Dale: "The season's comedy topnotch, without any exception."

The New Englander. The Equity Players make another earnest attempt to score, but again fumble the ball. Here is a disorderly study of a New England mother who lets conscience be her guide once too often. Early in life she forgives her husband his daily embezzlement. She helps him make restitution and get an opportunity to steal again. Under her plastic indulgence he smashes a bank, smashes himself, drives a friend to suicide, becomes the complete flop. After his death his grown son peculates too; heredity extends to bond thefts.

The mother decides it's high time to halt the family weakness for defaulting. This time she'll be firm and signal for the police. Her son's sweetheart, whose estate the son has largely defrauded, suddenly decides that jail is none too good for him. (He has just reminded her that her dad killed himself because of his dad, and she resents it.) On the verge of his trial, the son threatens to jump his bail, and the mother kills herself, with some notion of thus straightening out everything. She leaves a trust fund to her son to make restitution. Playwright, Abby Merchant, seems optimistic about the young man's reformation, in spite of having moulded his character herself. The audience is pessimistic.

Katherine Emmet did not suggest very clearly the granite substratum of the mother's character. Louise Huff, recently redeemed from the cinema, played the fiancee. She called her aunt "Ontie," furnished moments of genuine beauty, but appeared somewhat amateurish in her emotional passages. Alan Birmingham, Gilbert Emery and Arthur Shaw labored to inject life into their parts.

Fashion, or Life in New York. A milestone of the drama, this American comedy of manners was first produced in 1840 when the metropolis was only beginning to bustle. Its revival demonstrates how far the Theatre has advanced since its so-called Golden Age. Merely to recite its plot indicates that the very cinema has progressed beyond this stage. Snobbish Mrs. Tiffany, by aping the extravagances of French society, drives her husband into forging. That puts him in the power of a confidential clerk; but stay! he is saved in the last act by an old friend, a wealthy upstate farmer.

The Catteraugus philanthropist turns out to be the grandfather of the family governess. Furthermore, there is a count present who is exposed as a chef before the play is done. Fashion is fluffy with crinolines and sentiment. Many of the stock characters, and some of the lines, are still doing reliable service, barbered in the prevailing mode. But playwrights no longer luxuriate in soliloquies, nor hurl asides at the audience like bombs.

It is presented with a fine, youthful sense of travesty, even to the period programmes and the scenery with chairs painted on the walls. Occasionally the characters blare out songs, without provocation. Clare Eames teases her part a trifle, but Walter Abel and Mary Morris are a joy in their monumental solemnity. Its naivete is good fun, for average citizens as well as antiquarian.

Myrtie is an addition to the sob drama. Author Goodhue seeks to arouse your pity for a bad girl, bent on going wrong for the sake of the silk stockings she'll get. Then she meets a priest, falls in love with him, tries to go straight, to win his smiles and maybe his kisses. When he repulses her advances, bang goes another convert! After a year with another man, again the wages of sin are a baby. The play groans under a load of sentiment. The characterization is conventional, enlivened by small-boy efforts to say something risque.

In strong contrast to the sentimental nature of the play is the informal atmosphere which prevails in the theatre. Between the acts the audience is invited to adjourn to a balcony for dancing; smoking is permitted; tea and coffee are served.

Saturday Night A shopgirl out for a blow, who seems to be derived from O. Henry, is worshipped by a jazz-drummer with a soul above percussion. Naturally, like any stage shopgirl, she falls prey to a wily villain with a wife. When the wife and a cop turn on the girl in a gaudy den of pleasure, she jumps out of a, window as the best way to avoid an explanation. Unfortunately, a tree outside breaks her fall. She lives. The play doesn't. It is a violent melodrama, a case of theatrical hiccoughs,.