New Plays

Carnival. Meet Mr. Molnar; meet the Charles Frohman Company; meet Miss Elsie Ferguson. Almost any evening you may meet them coming in a body out of the Cort Theatre with their baggage in hand. For these three, famed for consistent and successful ability, have collaborated in one of the foremost failures of the season.

Miss Ferguson seems least at fault. A trifle less lissome, perhaps, than in her earlier days, she is still the corporeal substance of a vision; still plays with the grace and subtlety that made her famous. Mr. Molnar wrote an intricately interesting study of a woman wild to jump the hedge of life's convention. He failed to set his study in a sufficiently decisive dramatic narrative. The woman's character is there in all its broad sweep and tiny detail. Who cares? The tale is tiresome. The Frohman production was surprisingly uneven for such an astute organization. They supplied actors and scenery instead of blending them.

The story tells of a lovely lady at a great ball in Budapest. For two years she has loved a youth, feared to go to him because of the watch of her veteran and nagging husband. The great Crown diamond is lost--a Buddah's eye with a history. Finding it behind a hanging, she catches fire from its influence. She tells her lover she will run away. In the crisis, he falters. Disillusioned, she gives up the diamond and goes back to her husband.

Patience. It has long been the experience of diligent navigators that it is difficult to look through a folded-up telescope. Some similar difficulty was encountered in watching this capsule review of one of the best of Gilbert and Sullivan. It was produced at the tiny Provincetown Playhouse where three's a crowd on the stage and where the auditorium has all the lofty spaciousness of a doll's house. Necessarily, therefore, the "20 lovesick maidens we" of the opening chorus were reduced to ten, the dragoons enlistment was meagre, the orchestra minute and the vocal acrobatics tempered and discreet. Adding these effects together, it was the impression of the auditors that the Provincetown Patience was too little of a good thing.

Rosalind Fuller sang the title role.

Her past is chiefly conspicuous in its

relation to Shakespeare. She sang

By Gis and By Saint Charity,

Alack, and fie for shame. . . . and others of the warped lyrics of Ophelia--the Ophelia whom the Hamlet of John Barrymore demented. Her present performance gives pledge of a considerable ability in light opera if presented without so many physical restrictions. Her colleagues were moderately well equipped for other assignments. Particularly pleasant was Edgar Stehli's interpretation of the rotund Bunthorne.

To the considerable clique of Manhattan sages to whom Gilbert and Sullivan are the dual Messiahs of light musical entertainment, the values of the script and score were all-sufficient. To the casual wanderer seeking just a real good show, the miniature may seem in spots a trifle indistinct.

Seeniaya Ptitza. French entertainment may come and French entertainment may go, but the Russians go on forever. And for all that Manhattan cares, this particular Russian troupe can go on back to Leningrad and stay there. They delivered pale entertainment fashioned precisely on the lines of the Chauve Souris. A certain element of soothing saturnine melody they delivered, very little humor and no novelty.