Old Play in Manhattan

Yellow Jack (by Sidney Howard in collaboration with Paul de Kruif; produced by the American Repertory Theatre) is still, after 13 years, a vivid stage document. It tells the story of the search for the cause of yellow fever and, without too much sentimentality, portrays the heroism of men' who gambled their lives in the quest.

Laid in Cuba in 1900, Yellow Jack shows a frustrated and not yet famous Walter Reed, and the doctors under him, deciding rather desperately to test out Cuban Dr. Carlos Finlay's long-held theory that yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes. The test is hazardous, for since only human beings get yellow fever, only human beings can serve as guinea pigs.* The first tests, moreover, are bungled; but eventually, after an Army doctor has died, a soldier has been inoculated by press-gang methods, and four others have become guinea pigs voluntarily, experiment turns into proof.

In the play, the valiant medicos are frequently treated as very human men--ruthless, sharp-tongued, short-tempered. But in last week's production, they too often performed as though aware of the spotlight. Their actual heroism was a little blunted by touches of heroics, and Yellow Jack, by becoming more theatrical than it need be, seemed less dramatic than it is.

* It was not until the late 1920s that an experimental animal, the rhesus monkey, was found susceptible to yellow fever.

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