New Plays in Manhattan

Present Laughter (by Noel Coward; produced by John C. Wilson) was in no great hurry to cross the Atlantic after its London production (TIME, May 10, 1943). Now it is here, only Noel Coward addicts need be in a hurry to see it. Barring a few funny lines, it is pretty barren folderol about the life, loves and self-appreciation of a British matinee idol.

Garry Essendine (Clifton Webb) is the center--and usually the storm center--of a brittle theatrical group. He has a spare room for attractive women who have "lost their latchkeys"; he loves 'em & leaves 'em--sighing for more; the last thing in his flat he would part with is his mirror; and he insists that he wants quiet but thrives on scenes.

Spoofing matinee idols is not the newest of sports, and Present Laughter needs much fresher turns & twists than it ever gets. The best scenes are too much alike, the others never get going. Almost everyone is ostentatiously rude, but almost no one is witty. It's partly, perhaps, because Coward is such an old hand at this kind of thing that he makes it seem old hat.

Happy Birthday (by Anita Loos; produced by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein II) shows what a frightening assortment of drinks in a Newark ginmill did to--and for--a prim, plain-looking little librarian (Helen Hayes). On any realistic basis, abstemious Addie Bemis, loaded with pink ladies, whiskey, sloe gin and champagne, would doubtless be violently sick by 10 o'clock; but Happy Birthday is far from realistic, and by 11 o'clock gaily gyrating Addie has copped herself a husband.

Happy Birthday is sentimental rubbish. Not only does the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes convince nobody that gentlemen prefer librarians, but she has frantically tossed into the pot almost everything except good dialogue. That the pot ever boils is due to the presence and prestige of Helen Hayes.

As Playwright Loos's Cinderellative, Actress Hayes is on an acting spree. The portrayer of such moral monuments as Queen Victoria and Harriet Beecher Stowe lets fly with a tipsy tango, bawls through the mike a specially written Rodgers & Hammerstein ditty, cuts up under a table, does a swan dive off a bar, sees bottles light up, hears a cash register strike up a tune. Actress Hayes is hardly a born vaudevillian, but she makes what is clumsy about her also seem comical; and she romps through her new role with the gusto of a paperweight that suddenly finds itself a pinwheel.

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