Old Play in Manhattan

You Never Can Tell (by Bernard Shaw; produced by the Theatre Guild in association with Alfred Fischer) can't quite hide its late igth Century look or its early G.B.S. grin. A scrambly farce, it treats of modern-minded matrons separated from their husbands, children trying to track down their father, a penniless dentist wooing a would-be unromantic miss, a wise waiter whose son is a distinguished barrister. Shaw called You Never Can Tell a potboiler, and few--even of his admirers --would call it art. But though Shaw may seem to be writing down in it, actually he is tuning up. In its satiric toots and twangs about family life, sex warfare, class barriers, old-fashioned prejudices and modernist delusions, you get preliminary snatches of mature Shavian comedy.

You Never Can Tell shows its age in places, and the dangers of ribbing too many things at once, and a characteristic garrulity. Yet even in last week's not very helpful production, You Never Can Tell is seldom tiresome for long, and is often quite diverting. It shimmers, too, with good nature. Like his contemporary Wilde, and like virtually no one since, Shaw can be sharp without being snide, mischievous without being nasty. Quite soundly Stage Annalist Allardyce Nicoll once dubbed Shaw's type of comedy "purposeful fun."

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