New Plays in Manhattan

Springtime for Henry. Henry Dewlip (Leslie Banks) was as charming and entertaining a person as you would hope to meet. He drank too much, slept too little, made ardent love to his best friend's wife. That was before he hired wide-eyed Miss Smith (Helen Chandler) for his secretary. After that he quit tippling, quit gambling, went to bed early and infinitely bored everyone he knew. Finally he was reclaimed, but not before it developed that Miss Smith had shot her French husband--"poor dear"--because he simply could not break himself of the habit of bringing not one but two of his mistresses home to tea.

All this is a far--and very merry--cry from the sort of thing one has grown to expect of Playwright Benn W. Levy (Mrs. Moonlight, Art & Mrs. Bottle). And his comedy is populated by four of the most pleasant players now to be seen: wide-eyed Helen Chandler (rescued from Hollywood) ; facile Leslie Banks (late of tragic Lean Harvest) ; handsome Frieda Inescort (she has toured with George Arliss); and Nigel Bruce, the funniest man to be discovered by Manhattan theatregoers since Guy Kibbee was brought to light as a mortuary supply salesman in Torch Song last year. Admired in London, Actor Bruce first charmed U. S. audiences this season in Lean Harvest.

In Springtime for Henry Actor Bruce is at his funniest as a husband protesting his wife's jilting by his best friend. Theatregoers could be grateful that a slip-up by Actors' Equity permitted Actor Bruce to remain on the U. S. stage, in spite of the six months' interval between engagements required of alien actors.

The Passing Present. If it does nothing else, this play demonstrates that Hope Williams can get along in slow or fast theatrical company. She will probably never be seen to better advantage than she was in Holiday and Paris Bound, those stoically wisecracking comedies which Philip Barry wrote before he turned serious. She has held her own in a review, The New Yorkers, without singing a bar. In The Passing Present, Actress Williams is called upon to portray the kindly, knowing sister in a quietly dissolving first family of Manhattan.

Critics of the play seemed not quite sure whether it was bad or mediocre, but were reminded of Chekhov's Cherry Orchard. Unlike the Chekhovian piece, Playwright Gretchen Damrosch Finletter's play depends entirely on its urban scene. The Frenches were a proud, suave clan as long as they could cling to their Fifth Avenue mansion. When the son gets into financial trouble, compels the family to sell the homestead to keep him out of jail, the Frenches become impotent, scatter like smoke in the wind.

Playwright Finletter, daughter of NBC's Maestro Walter Johannes Damrosch, does not get squared off until the end of Act II. From then on The Passing Present, assisted by pats on the shoulder from Actress Williams, is not unaffecting drama.

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