New Plays in Manhattan

Over Twenty-One (by Ruth Gordon; produced by Max Gordon). It was a dead cinch that in her maiden stage effort Ruth Gordon the playwright would be kind to Ruth Gordon the actress. It was less a cinch that she would also be kind to the audience. But though Over Twenty-One is a collection of comic swatches rather than something cut from whole cloth, it proves a lively evening.

Miss Gordon has written about Paula Wharton--a Dorothy-Parkerish writer who becomes an Army wife--with something like a Parker pen. While Paula's 39-year-old husband sweats for his commission, his sophisticated wife is exposed to wet-behind-the-ears Army youngsters and null-behind-the-skull colonels' wives. To help her husband, she drips sweetness; but she is saved from choking on treacle by such menaces in mufti as her husband's former boss and a Hollywood producer.

Much of Over Twenty-One is decidedly vin Gordonaire, but it is smoothly decanted. Skimpy scenes are saved by funny gags and shrewd "business." (When the Hollywood producer gets into a tantrum on the phone he stops, ceremoniously hands his secretary the receiver, snaps: "Hang up on him.") As Paula, Actress Gordon purrs, shrugs, grimaces, ladles out her syrup, squirts her poison with enormous verve. George S. Kaufman directs traffic with his expert eye for preventing the wrong kind of snarl and encouraging the right kind of collision.

Ramshackle Inn (by George Batson; produced by Robert Reud) brought Zasu Pitts, Hollywood's funny, fluttery fool, to Broadway on a sleeveless errand. A sort of shotgun marriage between farce and melodrama, Ramshackle Inn is lousy with murders, lacking in thrills, not very long on laughs. As a befuddled innkeeper who winds up more than a match for the villains, Actress Pitts is amusing enough, but by no means a match for the bad play.

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