New Play in Manhattan

Therese (adapted from Emile Zola's Therese Raquin by Thomas Job; produced by Victor Payne-Jennings & Bernard Klawans) is a dark brown, 19th-Century melodrama of crime and self-punishment. Therese Raquin (Eva LeGallienne), married to a stuffy, sickly, mamma's boy Paris milliner, is madly in love with a painter named Laurent (Victor Jory). She eggs Laurent into doing her husband in by way of a boating "accident" on the Seine.

The lovers get away with the murder for a while--but cannot get away from themselves. Guilt and remorse gnaw at their marriage until the old mother (Dame May Whitty) becomes aware of their crime. Paralyzed by the shock, mother sits speechless but blazing-eyed in a wheelchair, biding her time. It comes at last, and with it a spurt of good theater.

Therese has few such spurts. Its classic plot can never be entirely dull, but Playwright Job has made things seem unnecessarily oldfashioned. As sheer melodrama, Therese doesn't pump up enough action; otiose characters keep chattering their heads off. It doesn't pack enough suspense: there is no taut atmosphere of guilty tongue-slips and sharp, suspicious glances.

Lacking real tragedy or psychological depth, the melodrama seems cut from cardboard. Therese, a presumably passionate and strong-willed woman, seems anemic compared to her sister connivers at murder; she lacks the hard fascination of Ruth Snyder quite as much as the grand villainy of Lady Macbeth.

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