New Plays in Manhattan

Pigeons and People (by George Michael Cohan, producer), subtitled "a comic state of mind in continuous action," runs in one long act like Philip Barry's Hotel Universe. A benevolent insurance tycoon comes back to his apartment trailed by an elderly, jaunty bum named Parker (Actor

Cohan). Found on a park bench chatting familiarly with the pigeons, the bum has told the tycoon a story of his life. The tycoon, astounded by a renegade with elements of greatness, offers Parker hospitality, grudgingly refused. A neat plot, promising an idea play, skitters at that point into Pirandello-echoing lunacy and

George Michael Cohan on the loose. When the shadow-boxing is over, remaining enigmas are: 1) What was the story in the park? 2) Who is Parker? 3) What did he want? 4') What was Pigeons and People all about? Only positive fact is the first-rate characterization of Parker as a superior indigent, expert at crying, bragging, weaseling, bullying, philosophizing, face-saving and putting everybody else in the wrong.

Shoehorned humbly into a group of presumably sane people--his host, a lawyer, two girl friends, a housekeeper, a butler, a detective and the host's sister-- Parker progressively webs them all in their own words and impales them on insane lip-logic. An opportunist juggling ideals, he shifts positions faster than the others, stares long & unfazed into their faces, razzle-dazzles them with winning sophistries until he has confused, ingratiated, amazed, enraged, baffled and terrified them all.

The closest to a ponderable theme in Pigeons and People is the old one used by Playwright Cohan of yore, that the sane are insane and the insane sane. Beyond that Cohan comes out flatly in favor of "straightaway" thinking. Cohan theatre, Cohan jauntiness make what promises more into a dialectic jig and a first-rate farce.

Pardon My English (words & music by Ira & George Gershwin and Herbert Fields, Aarons & Freedley, producers). The impressive line-up of authors responsible for Pardon My English seems largely wasted on a script which falls short of big-time specifications in score, dialog and situation.

Bland, competent Jewish Jack Pearl (German-American comic), works hard for laughs,leads around a small,bewildered dachshund, tumbles about the stage with Lyda Roberti. Like Funnyman Ed Wynn, Mr. Pearl will close his show one night a week for radio broadcasting. Meritorious are Carl Randall and Barbara Newberry who, while dancing in an easy, effortless manner, delight everybody by doing tricks with thimbles. Best tunes: "My Cousin in Milwaukee"; "Where You Go, I Go."

We, the People (by Elmer Rice, producer) is a potent squawk in 20 scenes with 44 characters against U. S. capitalism. In a welter of interrelated stories and typical industrial abuses, William Davis is a contented iron works foreman with a refined school teacher daughter about to marry a genteel bank clerk, and a bright son entering the State University. Comes Depression, Davis loses his job, his savings in a bank crash, his home and is finally shot down in an unemployed demonstration. The daughter lives in sin with her bank clerk. The son, jailed for stealing a little coal, joins a street-corner meeting in which a policeman is killed. He is convicted of the murder and hanged, largely because of his radical opinions. Other scenes tabloid black-hearted iron tycoons, grimy politicians, venal judges, rich diplomats. Written strongly and at the top of its lungs, broadly directed by Author Rice, excellently cast, We, the People is an evening of violent excitement, crude theatre.

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