New Plays

O Nightingale. They say that there are no new stories in the world. Yet there are certainly new tracks on which to run old wheels and these the author, Sophie Treadwell, has found. Her play runs consequently into the rare district where good entertainment lives.

A little girl came to the city for a stage career. A French roue tried his best and worst to help her to it. She selected instead a youthful and engaging sculptor. Novelty came in the wistful naivety of the ingenuous heroine. You believed, as did the sculptor, her story.

Martha-Bryan Allen, small Southern lady who jumped from the Theatre Guild to a Ziegfeld revue, is the girl in question. Her solemn, facile charm perfected the part and indicated that the U. S. stage has discovered one more young woman who yet may wear the mantle of Mrs. Fiske.

Tell Me More. George Gershwin is rapidly overtaking even the tireless Irving Berlin as a contriver of jazz melodies. Ever since he wrote his Rhapsody in Blue and collected great commendation from serious critics, his every movement is listened to with interest. In this latest, there are two new ones, Tell Me More and My Fair Lady, which will exercise the springs of many a phonograph. There is also a plot about a girl who pretended she was a shop clerk to see whether her hero's love were real. Emma Haig, Andrew Tombes and Lou Holtz are, next to Mr. Gershwin, the chief contributors.

Caesar and Cleopatra. The most heavily padded entrance of the season has been made. When the uproar of applause was past, the impression began to soak in that the tumult over the first play in the new Guild Theatre was a trifle premature.

It should not be inferred that time has dimmed Shaw's sparkle or that the Guild's production and performance are not competent. Yet the production was a disappointment, falling below the Guild's unchallenged standard.

Failing to obtain George Arliss or Godfrey Tearle for Caesar, the Guild chose Lionel Atwill. His magnificent presence enhanced the role's potentialities; his heavy humor and his cloudy diction deadened them. Helen Hayes, though very lovely and expert, was occasionally caught in her inexhaustible supply of cuteness. Helen Westley, veteran of many a Guild production, seemed to lack entirely the sinister severity of Ftatateeta. The best performance was contributed by Henry Travers as Britannus. The production was magnificent and the new theatre certainly the finest, the most comfortable and the most beautiful in Manhattan.

These last merited superlatives are a lenient to the above protest, in the interests of truth, against eulogies of the Theatre Guild that have become a fixed habit. Caesar and Cleopatra is a brilliant entertainment; but, had it been produced by Lee Shubert, it would not have been equally eulogized.

Heywood Broun--"The man who wrote Saint Joan can now condescend a little to the author of Caesar and Cleopatra . . . much slipshodery in the first night performance."

The Four Flusher. George M. Cohan had a formula whereby his hero succeeded in the last act and the play thereby succeeded automatically. This play, by Caesar Dunn, has not George M. Cohan, nor quite the same plot; but it has borrowed his hero. He begins as a shoe clerk; he hears of a huge inheritance and starts to open charge accounts; in the end, readjustment. The play is frank farce of the hokum variety, relying on its hero's energy. It is so terribly breezy that one feels a trifle chilly.

Taps. One should probably get excited when Lionel Barrymore comes back in the first German play of the frankly militaristic regime. Three years ago, the piece would doubtless have been hissed from the stage. Six years ago, all concerned would have been sent straight to Leavenworth. It is an ancient lot of theatrical twaddle about whether a German corporal can protect he girl he loves against a German lieutenant. The latter thinks not; and there follows a court martial, the only interesting passage in the play. Mr. Barrymore plays the girl's father, a sergeant, and gives one of his good performances, comparable in no way with his great performances, such as in The Copperhead.

Mercenary Mary. Just one more musical comedy arrived under an alliterative title. It borrowed an old farce plot about a convenient divorce in order to obtain a million dollar inheritance. In fact, it borrowed most of its ingredients and reassembled them in only vaguely entertaining style. Madeleine, of the twins Fairbanks, is not an unwelcome sight and there is a good song under the severely original title, Honey, I Love You,

Princess Ida. One of the less important Gilbert and Sullivan operettas was placed on display and proved a magnificent venture in melody. Mr. Gilbert's story of the three young men in the University for 100 girls drags occasionally, yet is caught deftly up and swung most pleasantly along by the tunes of Mr. Sullivan. Headed by Tessa Kosta, both cast and chorus were selected to glorify the music. The result: an agreeable evening.

The Sapphire Ring, adapted from the Hungarian of Laszlo Lakatos by Isabel Leighton, is a ponderous colloquy about events one afternoon in a certain bachelor's apartment. Helen Gahagan, as the wife who ventured there so in-advisedly, fails steadily to grasp the glitter and twist of feminine defense and inconsistency.

Mismates. This play by Myron Fogan started out to be a domestic wrangle in middle-class life and suddenly became melodrama. Turbulence over collar buttons and lawn-mowers, over a murder and a diamond robbery was none of it very entertaining. The husband was unfaithful; the wife was saved by the inevitable honest lover.

Thrills, by William F. Dugan, tells of a wife who went to a bachelor's apartment in search of excitement. When she found it, she was afraid. Later, she was found out. If the bad writing had been conscious, the piece would have been brilliant burlesque.