Desire Under the Elms. Eugene G. O'Neill has contributed his first full-length play in two seasons and, many say, the best play of his invention. It is not a gentle evening, this beating with the hammer of tragedy on the rock pile of New England farmlife. It is the kind of thing the spectator will object to on the score that existence cannot possibly be so brutal. A young wife of an old farmer forfeits her claim to beatitude by lusting after the farmer's son. The latter couple have a child which stands between its father and his stony heritage of farmland. He corrodes what little she has left of happiness in recriminations; and she smothers the child. The last step is the gallows.

Mary Morris, an actress only moderately familiar to the world, takes the leading role and fashions it into one of the great delineations of the season. There are sceptics who deny the force of her performance, arguing that had she played the part to the ultimate bitterness of the writing the visitor would be unable to remain in the theatre. Of the merits of this contention the individual will have to decide. Certainly the performance is one that no thoughtful playgoer can omit from his agenda.

Theatre de l'Odeon. Two years ago, Russia contributed the Moscow Art Theatre; last season, Italy gave us Duse; Firmin Gemier and his Odeon troupe are the famous foreigners who talk to the playgoer in an unfamiliar tongue this season. Their talk is French.

Their repertoire opened with L'Homme Qui Assassina by Pierre Frondaie. French fondness for dramatic triangles was elaborated in a pentagonal affair. The husband was killed; the wife learned to her dismay that she loved the man who betrayed her. Also implicated were a mistress of the husband and the murderer who loved the wife.

Le Procurcur Hallers came next. It was a frank melodrama on the Jekyll and Hyde theme with a woman added.

Third was L'Homme ct scs Fantomes by H. R. Lenormand. Like his Fail- ures, which the Theatre Guild produced last year, the play was episodic. In content, it dealt with a modern Don Juan.

Students versed in the French Theatre asserted that the company was not the Odeon's "original." These same students agreed that it was, nevertheless, satisfactorily representative. To culture-seeking but untraveled Americans, it seemed a keenly trained troupe depending on team work rather than individual brilliance. Firmin Gemier, they thought, was an exceptionally intelligent actor of about the calibre of their own Henry Miller.

Silence. Time was when the melodrama factories worked double shift turning out absorbing trash to the public taste. Of late years, the melodrama market has slumped and the mental machineries turned to other products. Max Marcin caught the operators napping with a sound old timer, perfectly played by H. B. Warner and geared so high that even the wicked old critics felt thrills crawling busily about them.

The visitor is ushered into the death house of a Western penitentiary. In five hours, Jim Warren is to die for a murder he did not commit. Two hours later, Jim gets out of the electric chair, the visitor out of his orchestra chair and everyone goes home happily. Meanwhile, the action dips into the past and depicts the murder, committed by the daughter of the criminal for whose sake he v;is about to die.

Shipwrecked owes more to Science than it does to Shakespeare. By an ingenious combination of scenery and electricity, a burning ship at sea crackles before the audience's eyes. The rest is melodrama.

The heroine suffers with a somewhat inflamed past which seems to be no fault of her own. She dives into the Hudson River to rescue the hero and he takes her to sea on the Corsican. The moment after she has hammered the drunken and predatory captain on the head with an ivory tusk, the ship bursts into flames. Boilers explode.

In the last act, the hero becomes governor of an island and defies any one to take from him the woman he loves. Nobody tries. The curtain falls. The Steam Roller rolls blunderingly through three acts in the form or an inexpertly written part for Janet Beecher. Miss Beecher plays an imperious and exhausting spinster whose lover went away to China years ago. In point of fact, his affections remained at home with her sister, an item which the audience learns on his return in the first act. For the rest of the evening, he drums up courage to beard the spinster lion and does just that in time for a happy peroration. The intent is comic.

Madame Pompadour. All Europe has hummed and hopped to the melodies of Leo Fall. They had their introduction to the U. S. in a costly and cumbersome production. Wilda Bennett played the difficult title role when Hope Hampton, onetime cinema actress, was dismissed at the eleventh hour. Critics say that neither had the essential domination to pay the role its due. With the exception of Wanda Lyon, the remainder of the company was ill selected. The humor of the event was in the hands of Clare Kummer who, contrary to her custom, did a dull job. The scenery, however, was superb; and the show emerged as the most beautiful in Manhattan. Unfortunately beauty and melody cannot carry an operetta unassisted.

Simon Called Peter. The church, as anyone will recall who read Robert Keable's novel, bears the brunt of the attack. A British Army chaplain does his level best to be a good fellow and finds that being a good fellow and remaining on the level best make an awkward combination.

It appeared as though the adapters (Jules Eckert Goodman and Edward Knoblock) were chiefly concerned with success. They pulled the plot out of shape and hung the whole evening on a severe seduction scene. A French cocotte pretty nearly undresses on the stage in order to disturb the hero to the point of incontinence. Curiously enough, the opening night audience found this episode laughable. Their findings rather wrenched the authors' purposes.