New Play in Manhattan

The Land Is Bright (by George S. Kaufman & Edna Ferber; produced by Max Gordon) is a show about the forces that helped send the world to hell, but to most people it will give merely an evening of sheer escape. It can't avoid becoming a movie, but it might have been a play. It is the story of a ruthless robber baron who amassed $200,000,000 in the '90s, and of his corrupt, irresponsible descendants--flinthearts and playboys, women prowling Europe for titles, girls scouring Manhattan for thrills. It might have lacerated the flesh of The Big Foxes and provided a scathing picture of The Unamerican Way.

Instead it is a flashy grab bag of crime, costume, melodrama, sex, childbearing, social climbing, wisecracking. Whiskey is tossed off by the decanter, money flung away by the bucketful, gangsters invade the marble halls, curtains bang down with gunfire. At the end, the younger members of the family, facing the world of 1941, rebel in "disgust, mistily resolved to serve America rather than swindle it.

The Land Is Bright is not wrecked by its broad laughs, its even broader satire, its jumble of incident, its rush of events. There was no need to treat the theme solemnly. But there was no need to take all the guts and sinew out of it, to make every character an exaggeration, every action a stencil, every speech a cliche--and then bathe the entire scene in a lurid purple light. But all these faults don't make it dull. It has as much kick as a decanter of bad whiskey.

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