New Plays in Manhattan

Mayfair. Broadway has recently been devoid of the sort of play which is chiefly concerned with elegant seductions in a belvedere. Those who still long for amorous speeches murmured above the polite creaking of a dress-shirt will find plenty of them in Laurence Eyre's comedy of the diplomatic corps. Chrystal Herne, a pleasant actress whose only disturbing habit is taking quick gulps of air when she must speak rapidly, impersonates the wife of a British plenipotentiary to Peru. He is more anxious to get an appointment to Rome than to retain his wife's love. She is immensely attracted to her husband's young attache, who remarks, while sprawling on a divan: "At times I am completely at the mercy of my passions." But when she offers to flee with him to some bourne of quiet, she learns again that worldly ambition can conquer desire. Then she accepts the proposition of the urbane Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs who. presumably, is able to make the sacrifices necessary for love without abandoning his prestige.

The heroine's feelings are almost as difficult to follow as Mr. Eyre's labyrinthine plot. But you must remember that you are observing specimens of the loftiest social strata who may be expected to have the most delicate and complex sensibilities. Even the butler is a deposed Russian striving to stifle his sense of nobility as well as his love for the heroine. And there is always the pleasure of hearing aristocrats indulging in their little jocosities, such as. "Adenoids are meant to be heard, not seen."

The Royal Virgin. The strange affection which persisted between Queen Elizabeth and her favorite, Robert Devereux. Earl of Essex, has been subjected to speculation by innumerable historians and, more recently, by the imaginative Lytton Strachey. Theirs was a relation which would in all probability have taxed the analytic powers of a Shakespeare or a Freud. The latest ambitious analyst is Playwright Harry Wagstaff Gribble, one-time associate of Christopher Morley in Hoboken theatrical enterprises (TIME, March 25, 1929). Playwright Gribble has examined several old dramas on the theme, has evolved his own explanation of its mysteries.

Because his army is too famished and ill-equipped to fight the Irish, Essex returns to England against the Queen's express command. It is a characteristic, headstrong action; she slaps his face. To no avail does he protest his former braveries and services; the Queen scourges him with words. Outraged, he attempts to lead the people of London in revolt, is arrested, tried, sentenced to the block.

In a last interview, Elizabeth gives him a talisman, a ring by means of which he may, if he wishes, secure her pardon. In his last hour, he entrusts this to the Queen's messenger, a court lady whose love he has spurned. She betrays him, informs Elizabeth that he is still arrogant, has made no mention of the token. When the Queen learns the truth, the axe has fallen. As it has cleaved the neck of Essex, so it splits Elizabeth's aged, remorseful heart.

Playwright Cribble's tale is a relatively simple one of the violent jealousy of an old. lonely woman and a tragedy caused by duplicity. It is to be feared that the historic reality could not so easily have been resolved into dramatic patterns. But The Royal Virgin is beautifully mounted, capably acted, particularly by sonorous Hugh Buckler as Essex and Thais Lawton as Elizabeth. Apart from its adventitious and untrustworthy historical interest, it is a good rhetorical melodrama, pleasantly tinted with archaism.

The Matriarch is an adaptation by Gladys Bronwyn Stern from her novel of the same name. In the book the history of the Rakonitz family, jewel merchants, is intricately traced from obscure sources in central Europe through days of plenitude and honor in the principal European capitals to a financial collapse which fails to damage either the tribal pride or integrity. Anastasia, the affectionate, domineering, unreasonable Rakonitz matriarch, has the satisfaction, in these troubled days, of seeing her brave, shrewd little granddaughter prepared to succeed to her role. It is a book crowded with character, pervaded with a sense of time and the continuity of human life and virtue.

The play, necessarily in the nature of a digest, concentrates on the matriarch theme. The book's cumulative, powerful exposition becomes a series of dull episodes, enlivened at times by sharp character studies, sometimes marred by caricatures. Constance Collier is memorable as the willful matriarch. A Month in the Country. People who like to be made happy at the theatre deplore the great Russians because their dramas usually end with lovelorn hearts laden with woe and frequently with bullets. Nearly 80 years ago, however, Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev wrote a play in which a group of people, weighted with hopeless passion, do what real people ordinarily do under the circumstances--separate and forget.

Madame Islaev, mistress of a lonely Russian estate, falls in love with her son's tutor and he with her. She is also desired by Rakitin, a friend of her husband, while the tutor unconsciously awakens sentiment for himself in the virginal heart of Viera. Madame Islaev's ward. The rustic leisure which inspires these affairs also allows plenty of opportunity for self-scrutiny and reflection. And so the tutor and M. Rakitin solve the problem by making their respective departures.

This delicate lesson in anguish and its extermination is conveyed by a splendid Theatre Guild cast. Alia Nazimova, rid of the tiger rugs and silver sheaths of her exotic cinema days, gives a pliant, emotional portrayal of Madame Islaev's autumnal romance. Henry Travers appears for a few hilarious moments as a stupid country gentleman about to pay formal court to the unhappy ward. The resourceful Dudley Digges is seen as a factual and disillusioned doctor, who woos a maiden lady by calling attention to her affectation and her diminishing value in the marriage market. The translation is by Max S. Mandell. A few years ago, when he thought that his services as instructor of Russian literature were not properly appreciated by the faculty of Yale University, Dr. Mandell established himself as a chiropodist in New Haven, placed the works of Tolstoy and Dostoievski on his waiting-room table.

Alia Nazimova, 50, was born of well-to-do, cultivated parents in Yalta, the Crimea. She had schooling at Zurich, studied the violin at Odessa, spent four years in a Moscow dramatic school. Aged 26, she made her U. S. debut after a European tour with Paul Orleneff's Russian company. A year later the Brothers Shubert contracted with her to play in English; she learned the language in six months, appeared in Manhattan in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. So successful was she that the Shuberts built her the Nazimova Theatre (now the 39th Street Theatre). With Lionel Atwill as leading man, she toured the country playing Ibsen. For several years she acted in Metro cinemas, following the vampire tradition established by Theda Bara, Louise Glaum, et al. Metro's president at that time was B. A. Rolfe, stunt cornetist, now director of the Lucky Strike radio dance orchestra. Last year Nazimova quarrelled with Eva Le Gallienne, quit the latter's Civic Repertory Company after a short engagement. A small woman with a mass of black bobbed hair, she lives in Westchester County. N. Y., wears costumes decoratively Russian, is famed for her even disposition. I Want My Wife is a preposterous, unhappy little farce about a shy bachelor whose inheritance of a fortune depends upon his marriage before a stipulated date. He is given a sleeping potion, and when he regains his senses an attempt is made to persuade him that he has espoused a local debutante. Later it develops that. while suffering from amnesia in Philadelphia, he has already taken a wife. The various states of unconsciousness and semiconsciousness experienced by the hero of the entertainment are shared, unfortunately, by his audience.

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