New Plays

THE THEATRE

The Fatal Wedding. At the fag end of the season, when imagination-- and cash--run low, producers seem to turn naturally to revivals. At least one manager, Mary H. Kirkpatrick, has done this with tongue in cheek. She has resurrected a moth-eaten old melodrama by one Theodore Kremer which consumed New York with excitement a generation ago. But she has not dusted it off nor sought to mend the moth holes.

She has presented it as near as possible in the mode of yesteryear, with the same variety of gaudy costuming and scenery, the same valiant posturing by a cast who seem ever ready for the camera to click. It is played with might and main by a typical stock company group, unknown to Broadway, who know how to send their lines booming across the footlights as if kicking a field goal. They are also adept at holding that pose while the curtain falls slowly on the climateric tableaux.

The result, as in the case of Fashion, that other antique among comedies now running, is a quaint exposure of the maudlin sentimentality and theatrical claptrap that filled our parents to the brim. Audiences greet the travesty with huge relish, welcome the pyrotechnic bursts of righteousness with unholy rapture. They find a novelty in what was once a flamboyant commonplace of the drama. So far has fiercely upright integrity receded from our stage. Shades of The Two Orphans!

It is played with an adroit sense of burlesque by the stock actors, perhap through the method of being just their usual selves. The abandoned wife starves diligently in her garret, the villain shakes snow from himself like a wolf entering the fold, the scenes of elegant gaiety in high life are starchly elegant. Mildred Southwick, Milano Tilderi and Georgina Tilden as a "little mother of the tenements" --still featured on many a newspaper front page--are chief among those who devastate this treasure of time. Another important factor in the acting is the whistle of the producer, which can be heard piping above the creaking of the melodrama as she hustles stage hands and actors about their jobs.

One Heluva Night. An organization of press agents and newspapermen brazenly self-styled the Cheese Club irrepressibly banded together to present what they vaingloriously termed "the world's worst play." For once press agents have been found speaking the truth. Jo Swerling's melodrama makes good its appellation without difficulty.

It details the preposterous adventures of a wealthy young Washington Square denizen who aims to be a modern Haroun Al Raschid in dress clothes. Still in the dress clothes, he holds up passersby in a dark alley in order to eventually plaster them generously with banknotes.

In the early part of their venture the producers seem to have been swayed by an itch to offer the piece seriously, perhaps with a notion that some regular manager straying into the theatre might detect the germ of life in it and salvage it himself. Hence, played in deadly earnest, it loses the fine edge of a burlesque on the crook medorama, despite the contrast of makeshift scenery. It becomes no more amusing than the average bore.

Its main entertainment through two-thirds of its length is furnished by the sardonic and cadaverous Ralph Sipperly. As supposititious coproducer, he makes speeches between the acts, introduces the outlandishly amateurish entr'acte entertainers on the harmonica, etc., and when the orchestra quits, brings on a hand-organ impresario who blindly grinds out the intermission music. In the second act Sipperly steps into the cast, replaces the leading man and kisses the leading woman. From then on the show receives generous jabs of hokum, such as the injection of a complete new substitute company of palpable hams when the original cast walks out on strike in the middle of a scene.

Flossie. This musical comedy belongs rightfully in the foregoing category. It unconsciously burlesques most of the musical plays you've seen. It has a synthetic plot, with the familiar situation of the wrong couple forced to occupy a bedroom together by an interfering relative, while silliness is unconfined. Its song cues can be spotted several minutes in advance. The dirt is dished at every opportunity. Perhaps it is meant as a satire on the typical French farce, for its creator, Armand Robi, was nurtured by the Folies Bergeres. Its chief asset is a talented chorus that cuts up tirelessly. In the title role Doris Duncan exercises her blandishments energetically.

The Best Plays

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

Drama

COBRA--Considerable expert excitement over the discovery that human beings have sex.

SAINT JOAN--Bernard Shaw unbends magnificently, with a good word to say for History as well as Religion.

THE MIRACLE--Showing with almost barbaric splendor how the woman paid even as far back as the medieval mystery play.

Comedy

EXPRESSING WILLIE -- A sprightly satire, with two women engaged in the immodest pastime of laying a man's ego bare.

BEGGAR ON HORSEBACK--A pungent travesty of Big Business taking itself seriously, with Genius and Love conquering all.

THE SHOW-OFF--A nicely balanced comedy that lies close to tragedy, with an uncanny insight into a human being who considers words outweigh deeds.

FATA MORGANA -- The Hungarians doing Avery Hopwood's stuff chastely.

THE POTTERS--The great American family in the throes of muddling through and then taking cre'dit to itself.

MEET THE WIFE--An affable little flutter into the realms of the agreeably henpecking wife who rules the roost and the roosters.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC--Walter Hampden reveals superbly what can be done with the sword-swinging classics when they're not played to the gallery.

Musical

For the regular summer consumption of musical comedy, the following are being served: Chariot's Revue, Kid Boots, I'll Say She Is, Keep Kool.