The Best Plays

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

Drama

WHAT PRICE GLORY?--Mainly a memory of mud, cognac and a French girl, which were the be-all to so many of the U. S. marines. The great U. S. War play,

WHITE CARGO--A morbid fable of the mixture of the races which occurs when white men are left too long alone in the waste places of the earth. The mixture is with the black; the place Africa.

SILENCE--Severely exciting crook play of the formula variety, assisted by a handy flash of novelty and garnished by the precise appeal of H. B. Warner's personality.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS--A cruel tale of the old man, the young man and the old man's bride carved by Eugene O'Neill from the granite strata of lonely New England life.

S. S. GLENCAIRN--Further plays of O'Neill. These are the earlier sea stories, written when his talent first began to stir and stretch its salty vigor in the Theatre.

OLD ENGLISH--George Arliss pulls an unimportant play by Galsworthy into the list of the essentials by his brilliant interpretation of the indomitable English gentleman.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED--Pauline Lord gives an even better performance than she gave in Anna Christie, as the San Francisco waitress who married an aged Italian farmer by mail.

PROCESSIONAL--One person in ten persons likes it; to him it is one of the great things of the season. An American expressionist experiment in which nothing matches, but in which the sum adds up imposingly.

Comedy

QUARANTINE--A thin section of runaway farce in which Helen Hayes, the runaway, is responsible for most of the laughter and most of the patronage.

THE GUARDSMAN--The smart comedy highlight of the season. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. The attempt of a great actor to seduce his own wife.

ISABEL and SHALL WE JOIN THE LADIES? Margaret Lawrence and a costly company spreading the polished humors of the drawing-room, and the mysterious tremors of Barrie's dining-rom enigma.

CANDIDA--A new dress for one of the Shavian standbys. Katherine Cornell adds her usual brilliant personality to a consistently capable cast.

THE SHOW OF--The glorification of the American hot-air merchant which has made Manhattan merry for almost a year.

THE FIREBRAND--Middle Ages, tights and swords--all jumbled jauntily together in modern farce form, with amiable results. Benvenuto Cellini (Joseph Schildkaut) is the central figure.

MRS. PARTRIDGE PRESENTS-Blanche Bates and some other worthy people chat amusingly over the impossibility of a mother's planting effective signposts along the path of her offsprings' destinies.

Musical

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