New Plays in Manhattan

Dead End (by Sidney Kingsley; Norman Bel Geddes, producer). In teeming Manhattan no expert statistician is needed to point out that the city's wealth is unequally divided. Crisscrossed everywhere by hairlines of social distinction, with frowsy tenements rubbing their rumps against the flanks of patrician apartment houses, the island's very real estate proclaims the class war. Dramatic implications of this scene must have occurred to many a playwright before they were seized upon by Sidney Kingsley, who, though he won a Pulitzer Prize two years ago with his Men in White, is a comparative newcomer to Broadway. But it so happens that Mr. Kingsley was dealt four wild cards to go with his dramatic ace when Designer Norman Bel Geddes agreed to execute the setting for Dead End.

As his scenery for Lysistrata and King Lear amply testify, Norman Bel Geddes is no stranger in the realm of artistic imagination. In Dead End, "an experiment in technique, a step toward increased realism in writing and production." Designer Geddes has given the U. S. Theatre new dimensions in the realm of naturalism. Displayed on the stage where David Belasco used to draw plaudits for showing real roses in real vases is apparently the east end of Manhattan's 53rd Street. To the left stands the rear entrance of a swank apartment not unlike River House. In the centre squats a row of verminous flats. To the right rises a grimy coal chute. And all across the front stretches a pier-end from which urchins dive with a splash into what normally would be the orchestra pit, but which gives every illusion of being the fetid East River.

Onto this extraordinary set Playwright Kingsley leads a poor crippled architect who, in the vain hope of winning a young woman living with one of the plutocrats in the fine apartment, informs on a boyhood friend named "Babyface" Martin. Martin's predilection for homicide has ranked him as Public Enemy No. 1. At the same time, the dramatist shows by inference how "Babyface" Martins are made by tracing the activities of a moppet named Tommy (Billy Halop) and his juvenile gang. There is nothing more seriously the matter with Tommy than that he has lice in his hair, which his loyal sister attempts to remove with a can of kerosene. But environment leads him to rob a rich boy, stab the boy's father and start on his way to the reform school and high crime. There, as suddenly as he begins his narrative, Playwright Kingsley stops it.

In essentials, Dead End is simply Street Scene without a plot. But Mr. Kingsley's episode has been immeasurably enhanced by his collection of child actors. Although they are professional mummers, Tommy and most of his gang seem to come straight from Manhattan's slummy East Side. When they play gutter poker, knock each other down or yell, "You stink on ice!" they do so with great natural gusto and authority. Because of Master Halop & Co. and Designer Geddes' work. Dead End belongs on any theatrical "must" list.

Play, Genius, Play! (by Judith Kandel; Lew Cantor, producer) is another Sin & Temperament drama. A violinist who tires of fiddling, seeks surcease in the apartment of one of his brother's friends. The friend happens to be a lady in satin pajamas named Didi, and she gives him surcease aplenty.

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