New Plays in Manhattan

Love Is Like That. S. N. Behrman wrote The Second Man (TIME, April 25). Kenyon Nicholson wrote The Barker (TIME, Jan. 31). One is a wise, brilliant comedy; the other, a colorful, throbbing melodrama. In the creation of Love Is Like That, they collaborated. By combining their efforts they seem to have detracted from the ability of both for Love Is Like That tries to impose heroics of romanticism upon comedy of manners, a process automatically self-canceling. What is left are attractive scenery, one or two bits of good acting, a few, isolated, clever lines. Vladimir Dubriski (Basil Rathbone), silky-suave Grand Duke in exile, is tumbled into Manhattan's gaucherie, faced with the dilemma of marrying a bloated divorcee of means or engaging in menial service for a livelihood. In a last act silhouette, he is represented donning his tall high hat, preparatory to sitting elegantly upon the dilemma's second horn.

The Field God. Those who expected Paul Green's second play to be like his first this season, In Abraham's Bosom (TIME, Jan. 17), a contemplation of the North Carolina Negro, may have been surprised to find him now gazing with catholic compassion upon the tragedy of a white North Carolina farmer who marries his niece in defiance of rooted superstitions. Stern Jehovah frowns upon the unorthodox union--their offspring is taken in death, the crops fail. A dying baby is God's revenge. In the end love prevails over the code. The angry blast of the Field God is nullified, theatrically, by long-winded dialogue.

The House of Shadows. This last drop in the season's bucket of mystery plays makes no great splash. It explains a haunted house tenanted by a mad miser. For years he had booed off all visitors until the hero and. heroine dared his confines. Especially unfortunate is the fatty dialogue that weighs the play down with uneventful explanation.

The Comic. It is entirely fitting that a playwright dramatize himself occasionally, especially if he does so with a grin. Lajos Luria, author of The Comic, prefaced this work as follows: "Lajos Luria is the pseudonym of one of Europe's most successful present day dramatists, used by him only when writing comedies and plays of a much lighter vein than his more serious dramatic and poetic works."

But the dramatist should write his comedies with more wit and originality than Mr. Luria, if he hopes to perpetrate a graceful hoax. The Comic fumbles with a situation in which an actor convinces a playwright that a certain scene needs rewriting, by maneuvering the playwright into a nervous predicament with the leading lady. The Manhattan audience was more befuddled than convinced--despite the able performance of Actress Patricia Collinge.

Goat Alley. The fact that all the actors and characters in this play are Negroes lends a flavor of piquancy to what might otherwise be an undistinguished dish of canned melodrama. The heroine is forced by poverty and misunderstanding, from one man's bosom to another's, thereby irritating her husband into catastrophic petulance. He does his beastly best, poor fellow, in the third act, never realizing that deep down she loved him always. "Earnest but crude," said generous critics.

Lady Do. Here is a musical comedy exploiting that situation, apparently entrancing to many, in which a man dresses like a woman to lure his rival away from the heroine, in order that he-she may gain her for her-himself. Karyl Normand impersonates easily.*

The Gossipy Sex. A Stamford (Conn.) audience advised Producer John Golden to take this play to Manhattan. It concerns a lisping tattletale in trousers, who so irks a houseful of guests that the Chief of Police himself yields to an itch to plug the stream of slander with a bullet. Unfortunately the shot misses. Actor Lynne Overman burlesqued his role of wag-tongue --which is about all that could be done with it.

Mr. Pirn Passes By. Because the Guild had the happy idea of reviving its onetime success by A. A. Milne, it is enjoying the sight of the Garrick Theatre/- filled to capacity for the first time this year. Into the home of an all-English country gentleman, George Marden (Dudley Digges), hobbles quaint Mr. Pirn (Erskine Sanford), his memory given to wandering off on appealing but unreliable excursions of second childhood. In an inadvertent moment he mentions the vagaries of one Jacob Tellsworthy, who, unknown to Mr. Pirn, is Mrs. Marden's first husband, believed in all good faith to be irreproachably dead. The prospect of bigamy in the family, even though unintentional, rocks the Mardens to their skeletons.

Wall Street. For those who do not know it already and for those who like to hear it repeated, this play dilates upon the fact that in Wall Street there is little or no virtue. Take John H. Perry (Arthur Hohl) for instance. The grime of a Massachusetts truck farm is hardly off him, before he finds himself filthy with the lucre of the "street." It even gets into his blood. He says so himself. The next thing the audience knows, old John H.'s son is discovered hotly engaged in monkey business, for which tactics he is expelled from the Stock Exchange. He jumps out of an office window so high in the empyrean that he must have been antique when he reached the sidewalk. Thus, only sorrow dogs the successful manipulator. As for the unsuccessful, their troubles are indicated by frequent mention of "bucket shops." The play itself suffers from diffusion and repetition, though, like the stock market, it has its moments. The author, one James N. Rosenberg, is a bankruptcy lawyer.

*The most famed U. S. female impersonator, Actor Julian Eltinge, whose testimonials the best corset-makers craved, is at present in retirement, in Florida.

/- Leased adjunct to the Guild Theatre proper.