New Plays in Manhattan

Kiss Me. Although Desiree Ellinger (formerly of Rose Marie) and the rest of the cast strove valiantly, they proved unavailing against a 5 & lOc musical comedy production that seems to have been assembled by an auctioneer, tied together with a shoestring and marked down for quick sale.

The Mating Season is something awful that happened in the Selwyn Theatre. It might be described as a drawing-room comedy with a Times Square touch. Before the high-class gentlemen marry the swell ladies they engage in dialogue that scintillates after the manner of the following:

He: "I am hungry for you."

She: "Yes, I know, you want your little sugar dumpling."

The Manhatters. The little Grove Street Theatre in Greenwich Village ordinarily houses productions that receive only condescending notice from critics and moral encouragement from art societies. Now it has something that will probably attract business. It is a revue that "does" Manhattan, from the yeggs of the Bowery to the shades of Gramercy Park aristocrats. In its course it sings sentimental ballads, burlesques the Gay Nineties in the lank, laughing person of Eleanor Shaler, stops off at a night club long enough to see a vivid, dramatic voodoo dance in silhouette, trails off into close harmonies and ends up about a mile ahead of anything Times Square has confected this midsummer, with the possible exception of Texas Guinan's Padlocks of 1927.