The Best Plays

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

Drama

WHAT PRICE GLORY?--The muddy history of two marines and a French girl at the front, written and played with a brilliance surpassing anything in town.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED --Pauline Lord painting the portrait of a penniless Frisco waitress summoned by mail to marry an aged Italian peasant. Great acting in a good play.

WHITE CARGO--Look up miscegenation in the dictionary, imagine yourself marooned in a lonely African trading post and go to White Cargo, to see what would happen to you.

S. S. GLENCAIRN--Four of the early sea stories of Eugene O'Neill, displaying the beginnings of a talent that was to give our stage The Hairy Ape and Anna Christie.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS -- Also Eugene O'Neill. A bitter tale of heedless passion bumping into the stone walls of New England environment and character.

SILENCE--A murder and a marriage upon which hang many consequences. The old crook type, but astute and valid entertainment.

Comedy

GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE--Ina Claire agreeably occupied in demonstrating that, no matter how thin a comedy of divorce may be, she can make it generously amusing.

QUARANTINE--What happens when a young lady runs away with a young man who is not her husband and who does not even know she is on the trip. Chiefly Helen Hayes.

MINICK--How old can a man get before he gets on his children's nerves? An accurate photograph of middle-class domestic difficulties.

THE FARMER'S WIFE--Mr. and Mrs. Coburn genially setting forth the tribulations of a hearty widower who sets out to win a wife at 52.

THE GUARDSMAN--Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt and the Theatre Guild in a supremely smart discussion of the domestic disturbances of a great actor and his wife.

THE FIREBRAND--Wherein Benvenuto Cellini, his time and his talk are irreverently held up for ridicule in a bedroom farce of the Middle Ages.

THE SHOW-OFF--The high wind of boasting, which blows so many business careers on the rocks, wafts this one finally into harbor.

CANDIDA--Katherine Cornell and a distinguished cast giving some of the best of Shaw.

Musical

The glorification of the American girl, joke and melody is most intensively delivered in the following: Kid Boots, The Music Box Revue, Rose-Marie, Ziegfeld Follies, Dixie to Broadway, I'll Say She Is, The Grab Bag, Lady, Be Good.