New Plays in Manhattan

Her First Affaire. They say that Gustav Blum, who produced this play, considers the ideal drama to be one requiring but a single set and only four actors. Accordingly Her First Affaire falls short of perfection by only one actor. In its cast of five is Aline MacMahon whose performances in Spread Eagle and Eugene O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon satisfied many a theatregoer that her tall, angular person is an almost ideal instrument for fateful, tragic roles. Here, however, she performs commendably as the knowing wife of a popular literatus who is beset by a flapper openly intent upon seducing him into being the victim of her first affaire. Wisely, the wife allows the little one to get just near enough to the danger line to discover that she is better off far away in the arms of her own youthful, unmarried lover. It is pleasant, light fare.

First Buttercup

I'm called Little Buttercup, Dear, Little Buttercup, Though I could never tell

why.

But still I'm called Buttercup,

Dear, Little Buttercup, Sweet, Little Buttercup, I.

H. M. S. PINAFOUR-- Gilbert & Sullivan In the shriveled, feeble, almost blind person of Mrs. Carrie King, now cubby-holed in a dingy Man- hattan hotel, it would be hard to recognize the sprightly, buxom girl who was one of the early Buttercups in Gilbert & Sullivan history. That was in the '70s, when she was equipped with a cheery smile and a rare mezzo-soprano voice.

Like most children of the professional play world, to whom five minutes' cordial applause somehow connotes complete triumph over Fortune, and a crisp five-dollar bill in the hand the equivalent of Croesus' sceptre, she has arrived at old age forlorn. Her house in Paris is tenanted by people who for two years have eluded the rent collector. She is in this country in an effort to recover her sight. Her foster son has deserted her. Her jewels are pawned. She has only the memory of her contemporaries, whose past brilliance still can cause her cataract-dimmed eyes to light up a little. Talking about them, she emphasizes her anecdotes with an odd, surprising gusto, amazing by contrast to her weak, quavering voice.

This is the result of what she refers to proudly as "my operation." Some years ago famed Dr. Serge Voronov of Paris advertised for an elderly female willing to submit to a transfer of monkey glands. Only one person in the world was adventurous enough to seek the fountain of youth under the surgeon's guidance--Mrs. King. The resultant publicity helped "make" Dr. Voronov. It delighted Mrs. King. It was like being before the public again. Whenever she walked out on the boulevards she wore a metal monkey pinned to her hat. The monkey glands seem to have worked. Besides, contributing to her wasted body a pitifully incongruous alacrity, they have apparently preserved her against the dismal disillusionment of old age. It is five weeks now since her foster son received a telegram notifying him that she had come to the U. S. to undergo operations that may save her sight. . . . Meanwhile the Manhattan hotel has a bill of $500 hanging over her head. The cafeteria refuses further credit. It is only too evident that the world knows her no longer as Dear Little Buttercup but sees in her broken body only the dust of a withered flower that has been inconveniently blown into its midst.

Blood Money

The theatrical season just past was marked by a run of mystery melodrama.* The theatrical season just beginning promises by token of Blood Money to continue in the same bloody tradition. A mystery melodrama is a play that starts with a murder and ends in a surprise. Here the murder is incident upon one Senator Bolton, who just before his death wrapped up $100,000 in a brown paper envelope consigned to nobody. The surprise, according to reviewing ethics, must not be divulged. Let readers know, however, that beauteous Phyllis Povah, who plays as sec- retary to the Senator whose demise is so unfortunately recorded in the first act, holds fast to the brown paper envelope on land as well as on sea, whither the characters repair in the second act, and in the end bestows herself upon the victim's eldest son. To many a flashing blade, nocturnal groan, mayhem, is this lady privy. There is a younger son, also. But, unlike the other characters, he keeps his mouth shut occasionally.

* Among them: The Donovan Affair, The Ghost Train, Set a Thief, The Spider, Number Seven, Wooden Kimono, Mystery Ship, The House of Shadows.