New Plays in Manhattan

Paris Bound. There have been since men and women started getting married an indefinite number of gravely ingenious arguments why "not" should be struck from the Seventh Commandment. Philip J. Q. Barry, able younger playwright, makes a happy marriage; all but breaks it when this irritating monosyllable is overemphasized. In the last, lithe moments of his comedy the man and wife decide presumably to forgive and forget.

This man and this woman have hoards of money; houses in the country; smartly charming tricks of conversation; and, as the play proceeds, two children. Also it has this man's father who, as he sees it, has been done out of an eminently perfect marriage by a wife who indignantly divorced him for infidelity. He is bent on appeasing similar indignation in his daughter-in-law.

An evening of amiable conversation; a genially drunken friend of the family; a correct, quiet, cordial entertainment is the sum. Madge Kennedy plays prettily; the father-in-law is Gilbert Emery, practically the only U. S. actor who can wear a double breasted suit as though he owned it. Critics are generously delighted with Paris Bound. The title refers to the widening quota of comfortable Americans to whom the sea of matrimony is simply a broad Atlantic with French divorce courts at the voyage end.

Conspicuous in the cast was Mrs. R. Bartow Read, whose name and address are in the social register, amateur actress making an amusingly competent professional debut under her maiden name, Hope Williams.

Paradise. In a small Ohio town, life was miserable for Winnie Elder; her family hated her because she was not married. Frantic, she went to New York. Proudly she returned in some months with the body of her husband in a coffin. An inquisitive aunt nosed out the news it was not her husband, but a body she bought at the morgue. Some potent playing by Lillian Foster did not suffice to make a rigidly effective whole.

Celebrity. The comedy of manners degenerates every so often into the comedy of "rackets." The comedy of manners satirizes anonymously on a broad plane of society. Its characters are types, such as the midwives of Plantees and Oscar Wilde's cookie-eaters. When audiences tire of types, satirists turn and flay contemporary figures in the professions.

Nowadays "racket" plays are pasted up by newspaper folk from clippings of their daily stint, with interpolations of plot and jargon which the newspapers know but would not dare print. Celebrity handles the prizefight "racket" with an intimacy that may annoy Fisticuffers Dempsey and Tunney. Of their characters, careers and managers, the Celebrity, "Barry Regan," and his impressario, " 'Circus' Snyder," are licensed composites. Personal mannerisms alone are spared. As for the women the play involves, and the shady proposition of the big promoter, theatregoers can only conjecture how libelous Reporter-Playwright Willard Keefe has been in his notably entertaining effort to put the headlines behind the footlights.

Excess Baggage. This romance of a tightrope walker proved agreeable. Vaudeville slang and another peek into the no longer private lives of stage people were foremost factors. The hitherto useless wife of the tight-rope man suddenly became a famous movie star. She went slack on her marital obligations, one of which was to stand at the stage end of the tightrope when her husband took his famed slide from the balcony. In her absence, he took the slide (in full view of the audience) and crashed. She hurried out to pick up the pieces; love bloomed anew.

Behold, The Bridegroom. It is customary with playwrights to complete their essays with a curtain. George Kelly has dared to be more complicated. There are many hours conversation and some thought to be expended on this tragedy after the final curtain. It is a play of two people who have been so busy enjoying and acquiring things of the world that something of the spirit has died within them. They fall in love, are both unequal to its challenge. The girl dies, poisoned by her own incapacity; the man stands groping, helpless.

Spiritual suicide is a cruel delicacy for the current theatre. With amazing daring, Mr. Kelly has written of two people in whom daring had died. The thoughtful, courageous quality of his attempt is scarcely obscured by deficiencies in his result. Passages of perilously rich writing intrude; clarity of concept is not constant. Yet the play, provocative, never bores.

Judith Anderson played the weary woman of society who fell in love too late, and placed it badly. Her acting was all purple and gold, particularly as the play proceeded, when it should have been cold grey. Yet to many people her uncanny magnetism passed for sincerity. With a sound experienced company around her the whole performance hinted again and again that the play was just a shade too good for them.

Show Boat. Edna Ferber fashioned for herself one of the happiest New Years in New York. In the same week a play of hers (The Royal Family) started what seemed to be her first great success in the theatre, and Florenz Ziegfeld's musical comedy made from her novel established itself magnificently as the best of its kind in town. She did not write the songs and jokes, but the librettist held closely to her basic story. The floating theatre on the Mississippi made a perfect background; Negro singers helped the melodies. These tunes were by Jerome David Kern, written at his best. Unlimited chorus girls and superbly competent principals (there is no star) added full value.

The Royal Family. Play has piled upon play about the theatre this season. Burlesque, single great success of the lot, is now challenged by the rough & tumble history of an august theatrical family. It is a story of the Drews and Barrymores say some people (including indignant Barrymores); cries of "no, no", from Authors George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. What of it? The play amuses.

There is a faint mad thread of plot whereby famed Actress Cavendish nearly marries a millionaire and retires. Her lovely daughter has married; and in the third act retires from married life to the fascination of the theatre. The great character is aged Fanny Cavendish, pillar of the family tradition. She dies at the end. Thus the authors mix sorrow with breathless farce, the better to dimn the bewildering existence of this astounding family. Some fear the play is too acutely written from the inside of the theatre to appeal to audiences. The first audiences laughed resoundingly; and cried a little, particularly when Fanny Cavendish fell sick and died. She was Haidee Wright, English actress, excellently welcome, brilliant in her part.

The White Eagle is a musical play with dignified and ponderous gait like an upholstered elephant. The plot (from Edwin Milton Royle's The Squaw Man) details the adventures of the Earl of Kerhill's younger brother. He comes to the U. S. bad lands to save his family's honor. He marries a squaw to save her life. When he is about to return to the vacated earldom, the squaw commits suicide. Numerous songs, concocted by Charles Rudolf Friml whose efforts crowned The Vagabond King, are thoroughly inspiriting. These, together with gay and gaudy costumes, clever settings, an energetic and willing chorus, make The White Eagle satisfactory if somewhat grandiloquent entertainment.

Lovely Lady. For those who like Edna Leedom this is valid fun. Miss Leedom is blonde, slightly tough and in earnest. She has been in many a vast revue and is, no doubt, widely revered. Herein she plays a U. S. miss at large in France. She, pursuing a svelt and penniless French nobleman, is pursued by an atrocious English nobleman. A group of clockwork dancing girls do steadily astonishing things. There is a bed room. Of the French nobleman it is said that had Elinor Glyn seen him before she wrote It the book's title would have been Those.

Bless You, Sister will offend many people. It scoffs sharply at religion, contending bitterly that in some phases the word of God is simply salesman's talk. The special phase is female evangelism with the lady preacher magnificently displayed by Alice Brady. Such a play was virtually inevitable after Aimee Semple McPherson's gaudy publicity; another one is due next month with Pauline Lord as star. Bless You, Sister has many faults, but dullness is not one of them.

Miss Brady plays a poverty stricken preacher's daughter. Desperate, when her worthy father loses his pastorate, she turns to evangelism under the canny tutelage of a red headed Bible salesman. She loves a worthless young man who stumbles into her temple tent just in time to be swept away by her passionate call for converted sinners. Later she must tell him it was fakery.

It Is To Laugh. The stately figure of Fannie Hurst strode in among last week's horde of notables with plays for sale. Miss Hurst's play was concerned with Jewish matters, as was her great short story Humoresque, later acted by Laurette Taylor. The latest, inferior to Humoresque, is moderately well performed by Edna Hibbard. She marries a crook, reforms him. Her simple Jewish parents are much harassed by wealthy surroundings thrust upon them by an unexpectedly prosperous son who sells antiques.