New Plays In Manhattan

The Arabian. Manhattan, which can go five years without seeing Walker Whiteside on the stage and scarcely bat an eyelash, saw him last week. Eyelashes remained firm. Somewhere, somehow for five years Mr. Whiteside had been making what is generally supposed to be an excellent living touring the smaller centres; part of this time in The Arabian, Manhattan is a vast collection of small town folk, most of whom fled to the city rather than face a whole lifetime, theatrically, of The Arabian. Mr. Whiteside plays a sheik whose power broods mightily over the desert and who hates the English. To the wastes of his own desert comes his daughter by a remote English wife searching, if you please, her father. All this is rather poorly played in an atmosphere electric with camels.

Take My Advice. One of those cheerful fools who fixes everything rustles radiantly through this comedy. He stumbles into a suburban household. Brother is engaged to a vampire; sister is being lured to Manhattan by a stage career; mother is buying oil stock. There is novelty when the fix-it fellow, having abolished these perils, falls victim to all three of them himself. A good company mildly enlivens matters. The Wicked Age. mae west betrayed her public. Sex, which she wrote and in which she acted, was very dirty and very dull. She went to jail for it. Her new play is about bathing beauty contests. The greasy gathering that assembled, itchingly expectant for the first performance, was disconsolate. Her cheap, shift less talent is useless to them now. She has cleaned it up.

Ink. There has never yet been a good play about the newspaper busi ness, which is odd since most of the native playwrights have a fragment of journalism lodged somewhere in their pasts. Written by Dana Watterson Greeley-- this one is as bad as usual. The journal in question flays car," police for until it puny is found pursuit of that a in "death the death car were the dramatic critic of the newspaper, a principal bootleg ger and the publisher's girl friend. This colossus of dramatic conflict is raggedly solved; raggedly played in many characters, neatly in others.

The Connecticut Yankee. Three rising young men have written an other musical comedy which the populace should cherish. In the spring of 1925 Herbert Fields, son of the famed Lew Fields (of Weber & Fields), having tried acting with im perceptible success, turned his hand to writing a libretto. His coadjutors were Richard Rodgers (music) and Lorenz Hart (lyrics). The show was the Garrick Gaieties, initial attempt of the Theatre Guild at satirical revue. Against every expectation, including the Guild's, this entertainment became ("Manhattan" widely was popular the and best) the were songs heard wherever there are phonograph needles. The young men were promptly hired to write other shows and with two Garrick Gaieties, Dearest Enemy, The Girl Friend, Peggy-Ann behind them* they are emerging as dignitaries in the glossy world of musical comedy. Their latest lugs the armor and anachronisms of Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee into the spotlight and makes moderately mer ry with it. Keener critics lamented that the device of mixing current slang with Arthurian bombast ("Varlet, thou art full of the juice of the prune") palled somewhat before the evening ended. The cast is capable and the dancing is violently good. And the music is so immensely bet ter (in at least three songs) than is most music in most musical come dies, that all can be considered well -- until, at any rate, the master song. "My Heart Stood Still," becomes a nuisance.

John. The theatre has known four principal studies of John the Baptist: Jokanaan in Oscar Wilde's Salome, Sudermann's John the Baptist, Sigurd Christiansen's Doperen, Paul Chan son's Sainte Jean-Baptiste. Last week the meditations of an able U. S. playwright, Philip Jerome Quinn Barry, on this theme were spoken from the stage. The play was staged by the usually proficient Guthrie McClintic;/- acted by the ofttimes inspiring Jacob Ben-Ami. None of the three were at their best and another idol, wor shipped by the conversant playgoer before its time, toppled. The play dragged solemnly along; part poetry, part slang, part words. Ben-Ami's heavily accented voice was hard to understand; his performance had the baffling quality of magnificent mo ments ahead but never reached. A faintly finer temper in writing, acting and direction might have made a masterpiece. The Baptist is represented as a rough mortal, egoistic, afire with faith. He is in conflict with Herodias, petty ruler, and his wife, Antipas. They strive to make him leader of a cause which will make them king and queen. Bitter against the sin of their incestuous marriage, he scorns the plan, is imprisoned and, as the final curtain falls, about to be beheaded, serene in the faith that the Messiah, to whose heralding his life has been dedicated, must now be at hand be cause his own life is done. Jesus Christ, necessarily much discussed, does not appear on the stage. ^

*A pseudonymic hash accumulated from Charles Anderson Dana, Henry Watterson, Horace Greeley by two playwrights, one of whom is named William J. McNally.