New Play in Manhattan

Pre-Honeymoon (by Anne Nichols & Alford Van Ronkel; Anne Nichols, producer) is the first drama to bear the Nichols auctorial stamp since this phenomenal show woman wrote and produced Abie's Irish Rose in 1922. That theatrical miracle, thoroughly damned by critics, struggled along at cut-rate prices for six months, then suddenly got second wind and ran for five years on Broadway, setting an all-time record of 2,532 performances. Abie's Irish Rose made Play wright Nichols an estimated $6.000,000. In California, where she still putters at playwriting and raises alligator pears, she no longer requires a staff of auditors to keep track of her royalties, but a stock company was playing Abie in Belgium last week when Pre-Honeymoon made its inauspicious Broadway appearance.

Pre-Honeymoon is concerned with the love of a U. S. Senator for a bubble dancer. Sole innovation afforded by this antique farce is the realistic offstage flush of a toilet, which reveals to the amorous statesman that his sweetheart is entertaining another gentleman in her boudoir.

The vigorous indignation with which Manhattan's critics attacked the latest Nichols production indicated that their powers of vituperation had not abated in 14 "jerky," years. They "dated," called "uninspired," "labored," Pre-Honeymoon "dull," "artificially pumped-up entertainment," "a whisky and pyjama brawl." With a great show of mock anxiety, how ever, most of them echoed the conclusion of the Times's Brooks Atkinson : "If it were not for the painful instance of Abie's Irish Rose, a critic might feel safe in dismissing Pre-Honeymoon. . . .

But Miss Nichols' record suggests that Pre-Honeymoon cannot be as bad as it seems."

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