New Play in Manhattan

Guest in the House (adapted by Hagar Wilde & Dale Eunson from a story by Katherine Albert; produced by Stephen & Paul Ames) introduces the most unpleasant stage character of the season, pretty, white-faced Evelyn Heath. A semi-invalid, Evelyn (effectively played by Cinemactress Mary Anderson) comes to visit some kindhearted relatives, at first proves only a nuisance who demands a lot of waiting on, but soon turns into a back-stabbing monster who plots everyone's destruction. She enrages the servants, drives the husband to drink, wrecks his career, ruins his marriage, makes a shrew of his wife, a hypochondriac of his child, precipitates a village scandal. Her trouble, which is sex, finally unmasks her; her phobia, which is birds, finally causes her death.

A kind of grown-up version of the brat in Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour, Evelyn is no less fiendish but much less frightening. In fact, so much effort is lavished on what she does, and so little on how cleverly she does it, that she ends up by being not frightening but fantastic. The authors were so busy thinking up new villainies for her that they clean forgot to make Guest in the House either tense or tenable. Along with the season's archvillain they have created its prize nitwits: any family bright enough to tell time or manage a knife & fork would see through Evelyn in two minutes flat.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.