The Best Plays

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

Drama

WHAT PRICE GLORY? The muddy and explicit War play which has become the acknowledged leader of the season's serious drama.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED. Tells the tale of an Italian-American in California who grows grapes and has prospered since Prohibition. He marries a young bride and touches trouble.

SILENCE. Just a good crook play in which the murderer didn't really do it after all. H. B.. Warner tells the story most convincingly.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS. The genius of Eugene O'Neill digs around in the rocky tragedy of a New England triangle-the young bride, the old husband, the young stepson.

OLD ENGLISH. Don't bother much about the play. Just go to watch George

Arliss giving one of his many distinguished performances, this time as a superannuated English brandy-drinking gentleman.

PROCESSIONAL. A cruel and yet elusive study of a coal-mine town done in a strange expressionistic medium by the Theatre Guild. You will either cheer or revile. You cannot ignore.

WHITE CARGO. The black and white blend of a man's character when he has lived too long in lonely spots among the natives of Africa.

Comedy

THE GUARDSMAN. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne discuss the possibility of a great actor's playing so supremely as to deceive his own wife and thereupon seduce her.

Is ZAT So. A tough tale of prizefighters in the home that, despite its lack of ART, is a prosperous entertainment.

THE FIREBRAND. The bedroom trials and errors of Benvenuto Cellini and certain ancient Florentines.

THE SHOWOFF. Completes its full year of entertainment. The windmill hero who talks before he thinks and never stops talking.

MRS. PARTRIDGE PRESENTS. A reverse twist on the mother-and-children matter. The latter, brought up to Art, demand domesticity and bridge-building.

SHE HAD TO KNOW. Reviewed in this issue.

Musical

Among the lists of laughter set to music, the following are particularly acceptable: I'll Say She Is, Big Boy, Ziegfeld Follies, Lady, Be Good; Rose-Marie, The Grab Bag, Chauve-Souris.