New Plays

Lyslstrata. The much-discussed Moscow Art Theatre Musical Studio has finally arrived. In case you have not been a party to the discussion, let it be noted that this troupe is a musical offshoot of the Moscow Art Theatre with which Morris Gest some seasons back showed our confident citizens what time, brains and artistry could do for certain phases of theatrical production. There was only one moot point on the opening night; that was just where the musical feature came in. There were trumpets and a good supply of choral singing, but the play was in no sense an opera, light or otherwise. It is said that subsequent productions will depend more fully on voice and orchestra.

Lysistrata is of course Aristophanes' ancient comedy of feminism. The Russians have chosen to exhibit an extremely rowdy and briskly amusing version. If the police commissioner could understand it there would certainly be difficulties. But he cannot nor can much of the population, and what does anybody care about the morals of anyone so obviously peculiar as to speak Russian?

Acting, make-up and particularly mass effects are presented with the uncanny force and fidelity for which this group is famous. For those who enjoyed the Moscow Art Theatre this production is decidedly a necessity.

The Wise-Crackers. Gilbert Seldes, self-appointed arbiter of the stage, the screen and literature, has abruptly dropped his defense and written a play. He did more than drop his defense; he tied his hands behind his back. For his play is one of the most astoundingly inefficient that the oldest inhabitant can recall from the pen of a presumably intelligent person.

The play was courageous at least. The author deliberately attacked the shrewd, irreverent group that eats luncheon at the Algonquin Hotel, Manhattan, jests bitterly at life and works. Mr. Seldes, though much in their line of work, has never been a member of the group. When he set out to write an impression of their home life and their hilarity, he put his head squarely in the lion's mouth. Whereupon the lion on the opening night roared happily and closed his jaws.

The hero was the wittiest man in Manhattan. His wife left him because he was so witty that he never had time to be serious. All of which fell pretty fiat, as Mr. Seldes neglected to supply him with one real witticism during the evening.

Chivalry. The theatrical season suffered another rousing thump on the back when this old-time melodrama landed. It is one of those things about a poor girl who had no chance and ended up by shooting the wicked old employer who introduced her to a life of shameful indolence.

This play however differs sharply in one prominent particular. It is proved that the employer was really a good sort after all (a bit weak, to be sure), and the girl a nasty little schemer. All this comes out in the final courtroom scene where the girl is acquitted by the kindly male jury only to have her attorney (after the verdict was carefully won) turn on them and tell the truth.

Violet Heming played the girl with burning emphasis, and Edmund Breese, staunch veteran, the lawyer.

So That's That lasted only four performances. So that's that.

Houdini. The man of mystery is in town for a limited engagement in a show all his own. There are, to be sure, certain interludes for singers and dancers and comedy while Houdini is upstairs changing his strait-jacket for the next escape. But the magician is the main spring of entertainment, and powerfully so. He gets out of the most hideous torture machines and performs the most incredible miracles. He includes a revelation of the practices of fake mediums (all mediums are fake according to Houdini). The show will be on the road all the rest of the season. Of its type it is unexcelled.

The Man Who Never Died. The determined and generally erratic Provincetown Playhouse is again busy with a wild experiment. From the pen of Charles Webster, an actor, they have produced a play about a man who discovers the secret of eternal life. This secret is not a matter of potions and glands; it is rather some spiritual understanding of the future so satisfying that the casual troubles of the world do not wear out the body. All this comes out in the last half of the play. The first half is a murder mystery very much like that in any Broadway mystery play, except not so entertaining. The last acts resemble the average Provincetown experiment--variously acted and inclined to grope.

Open House. Helen MacKellar, who was the target of so much grimy advertising in The Good Baa Woman fuss, does not seem to be a lucky picker. This latest is one of the vast flood of inferior pieces that have come along lately. It is about a big-business man who forced his wife to flirt with prospective customers and thus assist in the acquisition of great contracts. The play was bad and most of the acting, Miss MacKellar's excepted, was very bad indeed.

Merchants of Glory. The Theatre Guild has selected a War play which is possibly just a trifle blunted by the years since the Armistice. It tells of a French father whose son was killed in the conflict and who has been thriving ever since on his grief. He is a hero; he is to be elected to public office because the public has become so sympathetic with his sorrow. Just at the wrong moment the dead offspring turns up and trips the old man up.

At the opening there was outcry from certain professional observers that this play and its production were not worthy of the Theatre Guild. Probably this is true. They have done too many truly great things in the past to mark time as they do here. Yet there is one great comfort. When the Theatre Guild slows up and does a relatively inexpert production, the results are still several leagues ahead of so many of the others managers' best. You will not dislike Merchants of Glory,

The Dybbuk. It has remained for the Neighborhood Playhouse, tiny and difficult of access, to give what is probably the most inspiring and eventful entertainment of the season. Entertainment is scarcely the word, since The Dybbuk has been described as a pocket edition of The Miracle, doing for the Jewish religion what that stately spectacle did for Christianity.

Legend nourishes the play. Into the spirit of a lovelorn girl enters the spirit of her dead lover, driven from her by the mean ambition of her family. It must be exorcised by mighty, most holy incantation.

No sense of the mysterious, shadowy glory of the play and its production can be translated in these brief sentences. The sorrow of centuries and the majesty of a great ration are prisoned in the tiny theatre. And strangely enough Mary Ellis, once original prima donna of the highly colored, highly contemporary musical comedy, Rose-Marie, is the leading actress, giving a performance for which a playwright prays.