New Plays in Manhattan

Yes, My Darling Daughter (by Mark Reed; Alfred de Liagre Jr., producer) is an inconsequential pleasantry exhibiting Peggy Conklin, a cynosure three seasons ago when she bundled in The Pursuit of Happiness, as a serious young woman with journalistic ambitions which have no outlet for the moment except acting as her mother's secretary. The horn-rimmed glasses and blue jeans in which she first appears vanish quickly, but not the raspberry-ice freshness of manner which saves her cutenesses from being altogether silly. A topical note is injected into this warm and sprightly comedy when she asks her father: ''What do you think of these 15 judges--do you think he'll get away with it?" "Well," her father answers, "he usually does--but I wish he'd spend more time on his stamp collection."

Mrs. Murray (Lucile Watson) is a famous writer who was, in her youth, a stormy struggler in Greenwich Village for freedom for women. Now she has settled down to a placid, respectable existence with her husband (Charles Bryant) whom she calls "Commodore" because he wears yachting clothes when he sails his boat in Long Island Sound. Daughter Ellen (Miss Conklin) has an admirer so polite that he apologizes to Mrs. Murray because his late father, a judge, once jailed her for 30 days. Ellen pays little attention to him until he announces that he is sailing to take a job in Belgium, whereupon she decides that they owe themselves a week end alone before he leaves. When Mrs. Murray, horrified at this project, tries to dissuade her daughter, Ellen confounds her by bringing up an amorous episode from Mrs. Murray's past, discovered while Ellen was researching a thesis at college, and by the further discovery that the amiable house guest of the moment (Nicholas Joy) is the poet who wrote the book in which the episode was revealed.

At the end of Act II in this shrewdly cast and skillfully acted show, Mrs. Murray puts a world of feeling into her comment, as she morosely carries out the tea things: "G --d-- sex, anyway!"

Fulton of Oak Falls (adapted by George M. Cohan from a play by Parker Fennelly; Cohan & Harris, producers). The theatre is less convinced than the cinema that there is magic in a formula, and in the theatre sequels are comparatively rare. Fulton of Oak Falls, however, shows every sign of trying to be a sequel to Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness, with a daughter instead of a son as the trouble focus.

Fulton of Oak Falls is certainly far less than that, as even admirers of Actor Cohan could not deny. In the O'Neill play the wise and sunny character of the small-town father was allowed to grow naturally out of the story. In Fulton of Oak Falls it seems necessary for other members of the cast to butter him incessantly with such adjectives as "good," "gentle," "saintly," "grand" and "steady." He tells his next-door neighbor, a clergyman, that he was in love when he was young, that the girl went to Heaven, that although he has carried on as a good citizen, churchgoer and family man, his memories are what he cherishes most. "I never understood you until now," says the clergyman.

Fulton of Oak Falls does nothing to soften the fact that Mr. Cohan's delivery is a nasal, almost snarling monotone which is the epitome of Broadway and has no more modulation than a piccolo rendition of Yankee Doodle, or that his famed chuckle derives much of its effect from its irrelevance to the context. Ed Fulton likes lilacs and Tennyson's poetry, wants his family to be happy. His daughter is unhappy because she is treated like a child, and because her sweetheart's father is an old enemy of Ed Fulton's. When the young pair go off for a clandestine weekend and are seen posing as ''Mr. & Mrs. Johnson'' on a garish hotel terrace, the escapade takes on a tawdriness which a similar situation in Yes, My Darling Daughter (see p. 46) escapes. Fulton goes after them, pretending to be on his vacation, and brings them home. Everything turns out all right when the boy's father cables a reconciliation from Europe, adding that he will make his son a vice president in his mill.

Be So Kindly (by Sara Sandberg ; Richard Skinner & Hope Lawder, producers, in association with Aldrich & Myers) is an inoffensive, ineffectual comedy of family life on Manhattan's prosperous West Side. Its appeal is addressed squarely to Manhattan's prosperous Jewish theatre-goers who for some reason are always amused when they see their kind depicted as sentimental, hysterical money-worshippers. The story is that of Papa Kadan, wholesaler in ladies' dresses, who is financially pressed to the verge of frenzy in marrying off his preening elder daughter Clarisse to a well-heeled lawyer. When Clarisse (Jeanne Greene) has impoverished the attorney, she comes home to roost, appropriates her sister Delia's college tuition money for remodeling a fur coat, tries to get Delia's boy friend David too. David conveniently writes a novel, gets $25,000 for the movie rights, spurns Clarisse, marries Delia. Papa Kadan is further gratified when his stupid son Bert, an amateur boxer, marries the daughter of his wealthy business rival. Less amusing than Potash & Perlmutter, less sure-fire than Abie's Irish Rose, Be So Kindly had more point under its original title, In Gold We Trust.

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