New Play in Manhattan

Life with Father (adapted from Clarence Day's work by Howard Lindsay & Russel Grouse; produced by Oscar Serlin). No easy job was it to transfer to the stage the late Clarence Day's saga of his own family during Manhattan's horsecar era. Day's own chronicle has no plot, no love interest, no mighty triumphs, no major catastrophes--only crusty, rambunctious Father, who lost almost every set-to; helpless, fluttering Mother, who won; and four redheaded boys. But Playwrights Lindsay & Grouse have turned the whole thing into a spirited, likable stage comedy. They have taken the sting out of Father, but not the fun.

Father (Howard Lindsay) is a rigid reactionary who, to get his own way, turns the worst kind of anarchist. With all the convincing changeability of the weather, he blusters and blows and comes away emptyhanded, while his Vinnie (Dorothy Stickney) scoops up the prizes. Given to impulses and to oldfashioned, faintly apoplectic swearing, Father understands very little of the world, and nothing at all of his wife. He would certainly not understand, for example, why for stage reasons his family is shown, in the play, eating breakfast in the living room. "My God, Vinnie!" he would howl, "a gentleman eats breakfast in the dining room."

Filling the stage with the Day family, unctuous rectors, unwelcome relatives, tearful and transient servant girls, and forwarding the story with a protracted conspiracy to get Father baptized, Life with Father bowls pleasantly along. The first two acts are rather upsy-downsy, with some of the humor forced and thin, but the last act turns hilarious, with Father finally departing for the font in a shower of laughter.

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