New Play in Manhattan

Counterattack (adapted from the Russian of Ilya Vershinin and Mikhail Ruderman by Janet and Philip Stevenson; produced by Lee Sabinson) is a play about Russians and Nazis that could just as well be about cops & robbers. For three acts a Russian corporal and private stand guard --in a claustrophobic cellar whose entrance caves in--over seven disarmed but wily Nazis and a German nurse. Because they cannot find out which Nazi is the officer they have been ordered to bring back alive, the Russians must hold their rebellious, scheming prisoners rather than shoot them down. Since one Russian gets wounded and the other becomes wobbly from lack of sleep, this takes doing--the kind of doing, in fact, that made William S. Hart's fortune.

Worthless as a picture of war, Counterattack does not quite make the grade as an out-&-out thriller. It has goose-fleshy twists, but some of it is too old-fashioned and most of it is too unreal.

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