New Plays

The Great Gatsby. Owen Davis has taken the most recent and probably the best novel of the facile F. Scott Fitzgerald and made it into a play of considerable amusement and some excellence. The hero, who met the girl in a training camp and tried after the War to make himself a gentleman in an erratically momentous manner, is well played by James Rennie. In case you have not read the novel, Mr. Rennie impersonates a Long Island resident of no background, much money and a dubious method of getting it. Considerably in his way is the girl's husband, whose college education left him, chiefly, with a taste for liquor. The woman golf-champion and others in the semi-smart group that one presumably encounters on Long Island are also around. Mr. Fitzgerald has a home on Long Island and should know what he is laughing at; his laughter is often bitter. Perhaps that is why he is spending most of 1926 in various parts of France.

The Jest. Six seasons ago Arthur Hopkins delivered regretfully to the storehouse the magnificent remains of his original production of this Italian play. Lionel Barrymore had business elsewhere and John Barrymore was restive to play Richard III. The Jest had far from outlasted its Manhattan popularity, to say nothing of prospective great prosperity on tour. For six seasons Mr. Hopkins has been hoping to revive it. But John Barrymore has not been so minded and Lionel had other obligations. Accordingly Mr. Hopkins has finally done The Jest with a new and enduring magnificence and without benefit of Barrymore.

Basil Sydney, who recently played Hamlet in modern clothes, Alphonz Ethier and Violet Heming have been summoned by Mr. Hopkins for the new performance. It is said by comparatively minded commentators that Mr. Sydney is perhaps not so perfect in the role as John Barrymore. Ethier, say these same, is as good as Mr. Lionel. Violet Heming is considerably better than the girl six years ago (her name escapes). But comparisons, as has been said, are odious. The present Jest is far too fine to admit of them. It easily ranks among the scattered few you must not miss.

Embers. Henry Miller is one of our best traditions. Laura Hope Crews cannot, with either accuracy or gallantry, be called a tradition. Yet she usually gives a good performance. Embers is a French play, no better nor yet any worse than the average French play. An evening spent in inspecting its current incarnation will not be wasted. Yet for two acts and despite Mr. Miller it will be perhaps tedious.

Fortunately there are four acts and the last two rouse themselves remarkably. You find out just what happened to the wife's lover and to the husband's mistress and to their various children. You see it is French, and very little has apparently been done to ease the shock on staid Manhattan nerves. So staid, indeed, are these nerves that the shock will perhaps pass unnoticed. Embers is not a spectacular show; it is just a pretty good Paris problem, more picturesquely solved than usual.

The Shanghai Gesture. John Colton, one of the able creatures who created Rain out of W. Somerset Maugham's story, has written another spectacular play of foreign parts and strange people. It has a high flavor of sex and a flame of melodrama. China is the general setting, and a Chinese disorderly house the specific. The central character is the vicious old procuress, capably played by Florence Reed. It seems that the English had insulted her at some early point in her existence. Wherefore she got an English child into her house. Pretty soon the English parents arrive. This combination of events naturally gives Miss Reed a red-hot emotional scene, at which the audience hushes and presently cheers frantically. It is said by some that the play depends too much on this one scene. There is not enough strength and stamina throughout the whole to call it an exceptionally able evening. Of its type, however, it will no doubt serve amply through the season.

Love 'Em and Leave 'Em. John V. A. Weaver, who claims fame as the author of a book of verse, In American, and as the husband of Peggy Wood, has herewith written his first play. To assist him he found George Abbott who, with James Gleason, wrote The Fall Guy. Together they have fashioned a homely fable of those who watch the song and sorrow of metropolitan life from the cheap seats. Clerks and poor boardinghouse folk are their characters. Their touch is shrewd and their comedy genuinely entertaining.

Two sisters are centred, both in love with the same man, and all three working in Ginsburg's department store. The pretty sister is winning the man. Inadvertently she gambles away funds entrusted to her by the store's welfare club. It is the other sister's part to get back man and money. Florence Johns, Donald Macdonald and Donald Meek are the best of an excellent cast.