New Plays in Manhattan

Diamond Lil. Propped up under the armpits by a dress that might have been designed by the stage carpenter, Mae West played the role that she had written about a bygone queen of Manhattan's underworld. Diamond Lil was a harlot whose heart was as big and golden as the enormous swan shaped bed that stood in her elaborate cubicle above Gus Jordan's saloon and brothel. None the less, she was hardboiled; when a Salvation Army captain came to save her soul, she planned to seduce him and when a lady threatened a double cross, Diamond Lil stabbed her in the tenderloin district. Despite her efforts, Gus Jordan, the bowery boss, is caught eventually, for white slave trafficking. The Salvation Army captain, really a member of the police force, is his captor; Diamond Lil cuddles into his arms at the end saying, "Boy, I knew you could be had.''

Actress West plays her heroine with an eloquent and minatory calm, which contrasts well with the chryselephantine magnificence of her appearance. There are oldtime tough songs, outmoded slang words ("moll," "dick," "corset"), and singing waiters, one of whom yodels, in the musty barroom, the same song with which he recently amused Manhattan cabaret patrons. Diamond Lil is an entertaining melodrama.

Volpone. When the Theatre Guild wanted to play Ben Jonson's sardonic comedy, they chose to retranslate the German version recently effected by Stefan Zweig. Their choice was wise. As rewritten by an up-to-date European, Author Jonson's somewhat mechanical morality becomes a gleeful and raucous farce, lacking the solemnity of a classic and imbued instead with precisely the caustic and colloquial violence which it had for its original audiences* in 1605.

Volpone/- is a money-hugging voluptuary who lies in bed groaning and pretending to be dying. Seeing him so, his companions in coin-clutching, each hoping to be made his heir, come to his bedside bearing gifts and ready to commit other offices of friendship. Volpone's assistant in deception is the smart and fluttering Mosca; together, they are reaping a rich harvest until Volpone attempts to perform rape upon a friend's wife, sent to him for no better reason. Tried in court for this offense and adjudged innocent, Volpone tries another wily and audacious rascality, one which leads to his own undoing. Mosca, always a step ahead of his miserly master, makes himself Volpone's heir. Not, however, heir to his avarice; Mosca opens Volpone's chest and as the curtain falls he is throwing golden coins, by the handful, out of the window, into the world. Volpone is Dudley Digges. Mosca is Alfred Lunt; out of a flawless cast, he seemed merry and at ease in this old, delicious play.

* Or for play-goers a half-century later, of whom one, Samuel Pepys, called it "A most excellent play, the best, 1 think, I ever saw. . . ." (1665).

/- Volpone is fox in Italian: the names of all the important characters in the play are Italian words. Mosca means gadfly: Canina (a prostitute who tries to marry Volpone) is bitch.