New Plays in Manhattan

The Mask & the Face (by Luigi Chiarelli; Theatre Guild, producer). Count Paolo Grazia (Stanley Ridges) deeply pitied his cuckold friend Zanotti (Leo G. Carroll). In fact, he was a little disgusted with Zanotti's philosophic complacency in regard to Signora Zanotti's shameless philandering. Zanotti held that a woman, being essentially frivolous, was not to be blamed for her perverse breaches of the moral code. As for the Count, he'd kill his wife (Judith Anderson) if he caught her in another man's arms, that's what he'd do. Just before the close of Act I, in another man's arms is exactly where Count Paolo catches the Countess. Only a playwright with the charmingly oblique Latin approach to such matters would have caused the Count to do what he next does. Afraid to kill his wife, afraid of public ridicule if he does not kill her. he packs her off to England, confesses to. her murder, stands trial, is acquitted. His triumphant homecoming is marred by the exiled wife's arrival. While an anonymous corpse just fished up out of Lake Como lies in one part of the Villa Grazia. the Count and Countess mend their difficulties in another. Signora Zanotti has meantime been jilted by her last lover, so it looks as though things might pick up for the Zanottis. too. William Somerset Maugham has made a handy translation from the Italian. Actress Anderson, giving an amusing if reminiscently Fontannesque performance with her hair bushed on top of her head, considerably brightens a bright comedy. Actors Ridges and Carroll clearly earn the applause they receive. Best Sellers (by Edouard Bourdet; Lee Shubert, producer) was adapted from the French by Dorothy Cheston Bennett and is concerned with the foibles of literary and publishing folk. Shrewd Mosca is arranging to have one of his authors win the coveted Zola prize when humble Fournier (small Ernest Truex). his forgotten Wartime companion, comes to call. Fournier is jostled and insulted by the secretaries, office boys, critics, novelists who jam the great man's office. He is allowed to cool his heels until the publisher learns that the prize committee has capriciously given its award to Fournier's privately published book because it was the only entry for which there was no logrolling. When, a year later, it becomes evident that Fournier is unable to write about anything that has not actually happened to him or his wife (pretty Peggy Wood). Mosca adroitly arranges to have another of his authors fall in love with Mme Fournier. To Mosca's and her husband's surprise. Mme Fournier actually falls in love with the author, etc., etc. Little Ernest Truex can always make a defeated part seem humorous due to the basic fact that he is about half as large as the rest of the members of the cast. Nevertheless Best Sellers, seldom as farcical as its hard-working actors try to make you believe, is fraught with polite tedium.

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