New Play in Manhattan

Beggars Are Coming to Town (by

Theodore Reeves; produced by Oscar Serlin) is a might-have-been. Playwright Reeves started--and ended--with an idea. He raises his curtain on a set-up that promises to crackle--and then merely crumbles.

Beggars is a tale of two racketeers. Back in Prohibition days Frankie Madison (Paul Kelly) had taken the rap and gone up the river for 14 years. His partner (Luther Adler) has grown rich and respectable, with the help of Frankie's dough, operating a swank supper club. Frankie, getting out of stir, thinks the partnership still exists. When he sniffs the truth, he thinks it is still 1930--that the tough guy who took the rap is more than a match for the smoothie who took his dough. But the tough guy hasn't a chance.

A clash between two eras as well as two men, Beggars might have been good melodrama with something extra--something picturesque and a little touching. But the play lets Frankie down as badly as his partner did. Intended as a colorful has-been, Frankie merely seems like something that never was. And as a story, Beggars is no Better. The flowering of romance between Frankie and the supper club's leg-some cigaret girl (Dorothy Comingore) is banal and forced. When Frankie tries to act tough, Playwright Reeves lets comedy seep into scenes that should be hard-hitting theater, and they wind up as nothing. The best things about Beggars are its amusing glimpses of nightclub office management and Jo Mielziner's stunning office set.

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