New Plays

The Man with a Load of Mischief.

It is something of relief to find a play in which scholarship and a sense of beauty are predominant, particularly a play from England, from which domain the deftly decadent effusions of Michael Arlen have this season been most conspicuous. Ashley Dukes, London critic, has written his comedy around a night at an inn, an old time inn, from the shingle of which the title of the play is taken.

There arrive at this secluded hostelry, not entirely by coincidence, the mistress of a Prince, a Lord of the Realm, and their servants, maid and man. The Lord hopes to secure the lady for himself. Failing in his bluntly amorous attack, he sets his servant the task of seducing and humiliating her. In the process the slightly battered courtesan and the discreetly handsome manservant fall in love and dash off, as the curtain falls, to a London marriage altar.

There is a leisurely and poetic thoroughness about the piece which should recommend it to many. There is a fair performance by Ruth Chatterton, a good one by Ralph Forbes and an extraordinarily fine one by Robert Loraine, seasoned and admirable English actor who is too seldom lured to our actor-thin theatre.

The City Chap. A good many seasons back John Barrymore was helping people dismiss their troubles in a comedy by Winchell Smith called The Fortune Hunter. Charles Dillingham has resuscitated this hardy veteran, set it to music by Jerome Kern, and given Richard ("Skeet") Gallagher the leading role. It is doubtful if Mr. Gallagher will ever be a Barrymore; yet he serves the purpose well enough. It is doubtful if The City Chap will be a sensation; yet it, too, is sufficient for its purpose.

Despairing of making good in the city the hero entrains for a small town with the avowed intention of winning the richest maiden in the village with his city manners. Unfortunately he finds her sharp and unattractive. The blond hair and blue eyes of his choice are possessed by the daughter of the poor country druggist. Therefore he enters the drug shop, and makes it pay vast dividends by the introduction of a jazz tearoom. The low comedian marries the heiress, and everybody heads for the happy ever afterward.

Two or three excellent songs, some frenzied dancing and a small supply of jokes are here and there included.

Easy Come, Easy Go. This play is advertised as the 100th from the pen of Owen Davis. As a matter of fact he has written 130 odd, and become financially at least, the most successful of our native dramatists. Among his plays are the appalling melodramas of the early days (Nellie the Beautiful Cloak Model), riotous farces (The Nervous Wreck) and the sound and moving Pulitzer Prize Play, Icebound. This latest falls into the second category.

Like Mr. Davis' last farce, Trie Nervous Wreck, the play employs Otto Kruger in the lead. Mr. Kruger and Victor Moore (back from vaudeville) illustrate the story of two ingenious crooks who invade a health farm of the wealthy. When they are through, the inmates are not so wealthy. The spectators have meanwhile enjoyed themselves boisterously.