New Plays in Manhattan

Africana. Since the tendency is for popular U. S. song & dance to follow closely after the ebullient crooning and outflung gesturing of primitive Africans, it is logical that the Negro revue should crop up more frequently, with growing success. In Manhattan, the nation's theatrical headquarters, only two new shows opened last week. Both were "black-&-tan" affairs. The better, Africana, has to its credit swift changes, amazing doggers, several funny skits and Ethel Waters. Her 70-odd inches are topped by a small closely cropped head. She uses a typical husky, soft voice to unusual advantage, employs mannerisms frankly and disarmingly Negroid, understands the art of "living" her songs, so that they take on dramatic quality. In Harlem, she is queen. In Manhattan she stopped the show. The other feature is the chorus of many-tinted Negro girls, most of them well-made, whose hips keep up with vagarious jazz rhythms by going three ways at once. Rang Tang unfortunately starts off with a plot about two dusky Harlemites who fly to Africa for diamonds. Unfortunately, because, although their escapades in the jungle provide opportunity for skits at least a thousand times better than those with which the two comedians are equipped, plot coherence is poison to African revues. They, like jazz, should be utterly lawless and naive. If the show is still in existence, however, theatregoers might do well to give it an evening for the sake of the male & hotfoot chorus.