New Plays in Manhattan

The First Mrs. Fraser. All too occasionally the modern theatre forgets to be either violent or spectacular and exposes the excitement which may arise from gentle gusts of conversation blowing over the teacups. Playwright-Dramacritic St. John Ervine of London has written a comedy in which tea is constantly being served, the heroine is well past 40, and the voices are always modulated. He obtains considerable drama which is effective though well-behaved. Genteel, experienced Grace George appears as an English matron who has, at his wish, divorced the husband of her heart (A. E. Matthews) and who, after seven years, skillfully regains him while his young, obnoxious second wife conceives a passion for a ballroom dancer. In her intrigues Miss George seems wise, affectionate and lovely. Mr. Matthews, pointing his speech with subtle sigh, grunt and grumble, gives a human, extremely funny portrait of a boyish sort of man whose most serious follies must inevitably be ingenuous and disarming. The dialog is sedately witty rather than wisecracking -- remarking how, on the basis of deportment, it is difficult nowadays to tell the sexes apart, Miss George observes : "Why, just today I received a letter addressed, 'Dear Sir or Madame.' "

Grace George, 50, is the wife of Producer William Brady, the mother of William Brady Jr. Actress Alice Brady is her stepdaughter. Born in Manhattan, educated in a convent, she is devout, seldom misses confession or mass, often attends church before she returns home after a late party. She speaks French excellently, translates French plays for her own amusement. She usually looks as if she had just left a master modiste. She likes to swim, to be alone, to play tennis and bridge. She customarily waits a long time between engagements. Among her plays: The Girl I Left Behind Me, Frou Frou, The Two Orphans, Divorc,ons, The School for Scandal, The Truth, The Road to Rome.

Wake Up and Dream. Charles B. Cochran, the British Ziegfeld, is quite as resourceful as his U. S. compeer. The music, for instance, which accompanies his latest revue is by a trio consisting of Johann Sebastian Bach, Maurice Ravel and that infectious zoologist, Cole ("Let's Do It") Porter who used to lead the Yale Glee Club. A tune by the late great Bach is intoned during a dance entitled "Gothic'' in which two girls named Tilly Losch and Ann Barberova strike attitudes marvelously reminiscent of medieval sculpture and stained glass. To the threnodies of Ravel, the remarkable Losch, whose dancing has made her something of a fetish in Europe, performs an extraordinary "Arabesque" in which her hands and torso trace sinuous designs while her feet remain motionless. Cole Porter fulfills the duty of popular composers to provide at least one haunting ballad per show. Its name: "What is This Thing Called Love?"

Among Mr. Cochran's other blandishments are suave Jester Jack Buchanan and an ingratiating ingenue named Jessie Matthews. There is also Tina Meller, sister of the famed Raquel, a smoldering mite whose dances are Castillian and carnal, and the Griffiths Brothers whose appearance disguised as a horse proves again that nothing is much funnier than the combination of animal aspect and human behavior. Neglecting ambitious scenery and lavish chorus effects, Mr. Cochran has revitalized the decrepit revue formula with large doses of the unfailing remedy of personality. Wake Up and Dream succeeds because it contains individuals who do individual things.

Tilly Losch learned to feel comfortable in a ballet skirt at the Wiener StaatsOper (Vienna) when she was six years old. She has been on the payroll ever since, obtaining sundry leaves of absence. Her only previous U. S. appearance was in Max Reinhardt's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1927) but she directed the dances for Noel Coward's recent revue This Year of Grace and his current musi-comedy Bitter Sweet. Most of the routines in Wake Up and Dream are also hers.

Ginger Snaps, a Negro revue, not only has frantic dancing and torch songs but also includes a chicken-stealing episode. The New York Times: "Less than nothing was added to the midtown New Year's Eve gayety. . . ." The New York World: ". . . Completely unbearable. . . ."

City Haul. Herbert Rawlinson, one of the good looking men that girls of a decade ago used to admire at the cinema, proves to be a better legitimactor than most of his Hollywood brethren who have tried the stage. As the well-tailored and unscrupulous Mayor of an Illinois city, he performs with a constant gusto and occasional subtlety which extracts a modicum of amusement from a superficial play about municipal grafting. The crisis is achieved when the Mayor's thieveries threaten to reflect on his daughter, but there is a boy who loves her and who is able to protect the Mayor's good name for her sake.

Damn Your Honor was conceived by Bayard Veiller, a tireless practitioner of the grapeshot-&-canister style of playwriting, and Becky Gardiner, recruited from the heroic reaches of cinemaland. It has a piratical hero named La Tour (John Halliday), a high-born heroine named Cydalyse (Jessie Royce Landis), five settings by Lee Simonson depicting various splendid aspects of Colonial New Orleans. When the buccaneer has gained the heart and boudoir of the Governor's wife and that overbearing villain has been duly cuckolded, there occurs what bids fair to be recalled as a line-of-the-season. La Tour discovers that Michel, a devoted pirate lass lovingly engaged in his service, has a trickle of crimson on her blouse. "But--you're wounded!" he exclaims. As she plunges to the floor, the girl replies: "Damn it!--I'm dead!"

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