New Plays in Manhattan

The Commodore Marries. There is a theory, generally despised, that reality has nothing to do with bread and butter, and that if a man calls his house a ship and gets up in the night to reef his unreal sails against a storm he may still be less mad than most men and better off. Such a man was Commodore Trunnion.

He lived in a sort of landlocked sailing vessel with a hoard of money and a crew to assist him in drinking, antics and the illusion that life was what he wanted it to be. He made his first mistake in getting married to Miss Pickle, a sour lady who proceeded to reorganize his household so that below-decks it was almost indistinguishable from a landlubber's parlor.

Presently there was a rumor that she was with child. The Commodore was encouraged by the possibility of recruiting a son to inherit his command. When his wife's "inflation" proved a bubble, he became somewhat embittered against the world in which such trickeries were practiced.

Next, fearing that he would leave his wealth to Perry Pickle, the stepchild of Mrs. Trunnion's sister-in-law, Mrs. Trunnion robbed the Commodore and assured him that any legal steps he might make she would frustrate by having him locked up as a lunatic.

"You can't do that," said Commodore Trunnion. "Why not?" asked his wife. "Because I'm not mad," said the Commodore. "Prove it," said Mrs. Trunnion. And this he could not do. Instead, he put her off his ship, made her walk the plank in fact, and went back to his old way of living with Hatchways, his mate, and Fawcett, an able seaman.

The involved and somewhat ridiculous plot which serves as a skeleton for this lively and beautiful comedy is taken from the admirable inventions of the late great Tobias George Smollett (1721-71) in his novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle. Likewise the strange eloquence of the Commodore who prefaces his simplest statements with "Hear the news," whose expression of habitual astonishment is "d'you say?" and who addresses his nephew, with deep affection, as a "human mistake."

The double entendre which is allowed to appear, lucid and poetical, between obstetrical jokes, the acerbities of the Pickle women and the antic gaieties of Hatchways and Fawcett. is ascribable to the author of the play, Kate Parsons. That it makes of The Commodore Marries so funny, so human, so sad a play is doubtless due largely to the direction of Arthur Hopkins and to the sympathy and skill of Walter Huston's acting.

Sweet Adeline. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II offered last week their show Sweet Adeline, lampooning softly the notions of the Nineties in a gay and rambling history of which the heroine was a Broadway nightingale, singing with the thorn in her stuffed bosom.

Miss America enters with an eagle but loses it. Worried on her pedestal she cries:

"Where is the bird? Where is the goddam bird?"

Helen Morgan, without whose pretty legs no piano is complete, appears as Adeline, chanting her sorry songs and enquiring, "Why Was I Born?" The best thing in Sweet Adeline is Charles Butterworth. A cadaverous and tragic buffoon, he voices his sardonic witticisms in sepulchral tones, never suggesting that what he says is laughable. When found lolling near a field of war, he explains that he started for the front but his arches fell, just in time. Also, he falls in love with a female piccolo player.

Soldiers and Women. The sleepy vices of a barracks in Baluchistan provoke a dreadful situation. A slinky, unscrupulous Colonel's lady by the name of

Brenda Ritchie is trying to ensnare a sol dier by the name of Clive Branch. He, with somewhat questionable gallantry, is being attentive to one Helen Arnold who is so nice that she would no doubt remain strictly monogamous but for the fact that her husband is impotent. Enraged at the failure of her vicious charms, Brenda decides to murder Capt. Branch. But she makes the mistake of committing her crime in a dark room and, 'instead of Clive Branch, punctures Capt. Arnold, against whom she held no special grudge. Nonetheless, so bad is her character that she does not regret her error, nor is she linked with it until the very end of the last act. Then, chagrinned rather than disheartened, she exits in sly beauty, carrying a vial of poison. Though Paul Hervey Fox and George Tilton laid the scene of their story in Baluchistan where, to a Manhattan audience, no crime would be surprising, it becomes obvious as the play proceeds that the subject matter is merely one of those sex tangles such as are responsible for the vogue of tabloid newspapers. It is disconcerting to find such melodrama enwrapped in slow and pompous language. The first two acts hold your attention largely because of Violet Heming, who makes you admire Mrs. Ritchie's appearance while deploring her tendencies.