New Plays in Manhattan

Katerina. This latest addition to the programs of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre is further justification for the rediscovery of Alia Nazimova. It is more. Leonid Andreyev's play has been left behind by changing social codes but it retains a turbulent glow which shines through its drenching melancholy.

The playwright's Katerina is a wife unjustly suspected at the start. Her husband attempts to kill her because of his belief that she is unfaithful. The shots stir in her a spirit of rebellion which sends her out, in spite of a reconciliation, to defy him. In the playwright's mind she sinks lower and lower. That, however, is against a background of Victorian moral standards. What would happen to Katerina in real life in 1929 would make an entirely different play. Andreyev deals with the Russia of before the War. That Russia is gone, so much of his play vanishes, too,

Nazimova, except for moments when she is too much the actress, gives a performance that is fine and true. She rises to the play's tensity with the real genius of a tragedienne and she sinks into its swamps of woe with equal effectiveness. There are also excellent characterizations by Leona Roberts, as a mother, and Walter Beck, as the husband.

The return of Nazimova to her rightful position among the great of the speaking stage is another achievement of the amazing Miss Le Gallienne. Nazimova was born in the Crimea in 1879. Her cultured parents sent her to Moscow to study music, eventually to take up drama as a pupil of Stanislavsky. She excelled almost immediately. She reached New York in 1905 with a Russian company that played East Side theatres and eventually stranded.

Nazimova mastered English and a year later appeared in an Ibsen repertory that immediately won her a place among the stars. She played opposite Walter Hampden in his U. S. debut (The Comtesse Coquette) in 1907. Followed several years of triumph in the U. S. and on the Continent. Then cinema claimed her, then vaudeville. Miss Le Gallienne persuaded her last year to join the cast for The Cherry Orchard and she bloomed again, unfaded at 49.

Meet the Prince. A. A. Milne hasn't been quite the same since he took to hanging out at Pooh Corner. There was a time when he used acids that ate their way through the softness of his whimsy. Now he has gone completely dolce far niente. It may be Pooh Corner, but it is not life.

In the latest of his plays to reach Broadway he starts with an excellent idea. He evidently is bent on making fun of the snobbish folk who bow to royalty. So he spins the plausible tale of a restless adventurer who, for want of a better occupation, created himself a prince of a non-existent buffer state. The kowtowing proceeds until he meets his deserted wife who brings him back to earth. All is well while Mr. Milne is making fun of snobbery, but when he dips into romance he starts unwittingly to make fun of himself.

To stand up at all the play demands the lightest touch in the acting. This it does not receive, except from two members of the cast, Cecile Dixon and J. M. Kerrigan. The others are so conscious of the whimsy with which they are dealing that it vanishes in their eager hands. This is particularly true of Mary Ellis and in a lesser degree of Basil Sydney. However, not even heavy performances can completely weigh down ebullient dialog. There are worse places in life than Pooh Corner.