Best Plays in Manhattan

These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important.

SERIOUS

THE LETTER--Katharine Cornell shoots a lover and tells why.

ESCAPE--The world scatters crumbs for an escaping jailbird.

CIVIC REPERTORY THEATRE--Eva Le Gallienne's troupe in a shifting bill of sound plays, soundly played.

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE--Walter Hampden keeping green the memory of Ibsen.

PORGY--A crippled Negro's love along the docks of Charleston.

MELODRAMA THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAN--A court room in which the world may sit in judgment on beauty and the beast.

INTERFERENCE--In which a girl is given prussic acid as an antidote for blackmail.

DRACULA--Creepy conglomeration of life, love and a ghost who drinks blood.

THE SPIDER--A murder web spun by a magician.

BROADWAY--Light hearts, low minds, two murders in Manhattan after midnight.

FUNNY

THE SHANNONS OF BROADWAY--The wide awake wanderings of vaudeville vagrants in a small town.

THE COMMAND To LOVE--Recently fumigated by official request, but still the story of European diplomacy winning immoral victories.

THE ROAD To ROME--Hannibal, general of Carthage, is destroyed by the noblest Roman woman of them all.

BURLESQUE -- Hearts broken and mended on the burlesque wheel.

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW--Basil Sydney and Mary Ellis bring Shakespeare boisterously up to date.

MUSICAL

Lighter moments are agreeably numerous in The Mikado, Manhattan Mary, Good News, A Night in Spain, Chauve-Souris, Hit the Deck.

*Mr. Fields also wrote the jokes for the furiously successful Hit the Deck.

/-Shrewd director of The Green Hat, Saturday's Children, etc., etc.; husband of Katharine Cornell.