New Plays in Manhattan

Joan of Arc. In the Autobiography, Mark Twain tells of the difficulty an audience once had to divine the meaning of a charade acted by small Susy and small Clara Clemens, of which the syllables apparently were "red," "just," "her." The acting of the whole word was less obscure. The children squabbled over the register. . . . Clara Clemens, who has been Mrs. Ossip (Salomonovitsch) Gabrilowitsch since 1909, has seldom since been accused of obscurity in her art. Last week in Manhattan she produced and played a dramatization of her father's biography of Joan and lest anything be not explicit, lest the acting fail to register, she posted a sonorous gentleman at one end of the footlights to read long Mark Twain passages between scenes. Needless to say, the passages were enjoyable. They lasted a long time and, to many in the audience, were thoroughly familiar. They made the acting, disarmingly sincere as it was, almost superfluous.

Rutherford & Son. The Lenox Hill Players are among the Little Theatre organizations of Manhattan. Valiantly they produce great plays of tried value. Recently, their enterprises in drama have included The Cenci, The Liar, John Ferguson, (the play that "made" the Theatre Guild) and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, reduced for the common weal to 'Tis Pity. Rutherford & Son, now at the Grove Street Theatre created something of a furor on its presentation in England 15 years ago. It is a merciless exposition of how iron and cinders impregnate the family life of a captain of industry, casehardening his heart, warping his honor, searing the joy of all who will not walk straight along the machine-made ways of the industry. It is stern stuff, by its intrinsic drama compensates for lack of professional skill in production.

One Glorious Hour. Escaping from the confinement of ancestral halls and baronial drawing-rooms, a well-rounded young baroness (Vivienne Osborne), clad in the glory of a one-piece bathing suit, sports naively with three celibates--a musician, a poet, a painter, in their woodland lodge. She confers upon them only inspiration, artfully dodging more specific advances. Mystic dialogue floats about on the verities of the eternal feminine as revealed in sea-wave, forest breeze, earth pulse, etc., etc. Part of the dialogue is put to music, as it should be if the music is loud enough. Finally the baroness' relatives make her go home to behave according to the hackneyed customs of her kind. The beautiful bubble of romance is thus burst, releasing what is left of the audience.

The Second Man. A few years ago, S. N. Behrman press-agented Jed Harris's productions. They separated--Mr. Harris later to present Broadway, Mr. Behrman to tuck himself away in Delaware Water Gap. There he wrote his first play, The Second Man. It requires but five actors, an economy for which producers might be grateful, thought the author when he hopefully presented his opus for their consideration. The apogee of the new playwright's dream is production by the Theatre Guild. This became reality for Author Behrman. A great cast was provided: Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Margalo Gillmore, Earle Larimore. In review, it is hard to determine whether Mr. Behrman, author, or Alfred Lunt, actor, is the real hero of the evening. Between them they offer a play so wise, searching, mellow, so steadily aglow with bright urbanity and skillful theatricality, that the season cannot be justly appreciated without its being seen. The action concerns the destruction, by a third rate novelist, of a finer self. He foregoes a naive flapper for a knowing widow, robbing creative Peter to pay critical Paul.

The Tightwad. President Coolidge should have seen this play, an invention of young Robert Keith, hitherto a mere actor. It libeled Quincy, 111., its scene, and it showed where this thrift talk will lead us. The hero wore rubber collars and limited his girl to sample-size boxes of candy until he swung the realty deal that moved them from Main St. to Easy St. The production cost practically no acting ability, the writing an irreducible minimum of wit. The tax levied upon the audience's patience will soon, it is predicted, be repealed.