New Play in Manhattan

Patience. Gusto and gay abandon are the birthright of the rollicking operettas of W. S. Gilbert & Arthur Seymour Sullivan. And while Vivian Hart as the saucy dairy maid, James Watts as the lavender Bunthorne and Joseph Macaulay as the poet Archibald, carol sweetly, they play with more diffidence than zest. A chorus even less frolicsome than the principals was likened by one reviewer to "a daisy chain of serious Smith or Bryn Mawr girls." The proceedings are applauded in genteel style by players in two stage boxes, outfitted in the costumes of 1881. For those who prefer emasculated albeit musical Gilbert & Sullivan to no Gilbert & Sullivan, the production will serve. The plot, as all should know, satirizes Oscar Wildian esthetics, which it quite drove out of business. Precious Poet Bunthorne captivates 20 lovesick maidens but not milkmaid Patience, whose true love is a simpler fellow, Poet Grosvenor. Her example sends the love-sick maidens to the arms of robust Dragoons.