New Plays in Manhattan

The Bird Cage (by Arthur Laurents; produced by Walter Fried & Lars Norden-son) is a combination of all the formula tough-guy movies that a lot of people have been staying away from for years. The particular locale of The Bird, Cage is a gaudily sordid nightclub; the particular hard guy is the nightclub's boss. For the rest, Playwright Laurents invents nothing, improves nothing, omits nothing. He has successfully combed the market for a strand of perfectly matched cliches.

Wally Williams (nicely played by Melvyn Douglas) is a thoroughgoing heel. He got hold of the nightspot through blackmailing the previous owner; he frightens the help, seduces the showgirls, mistreats his own family. When he gets into financial straits, he determines to go down the same brutal way he came up. He frames one of his partners, breaks the piano-playing hand of the other, sets fire to the nightclub rather than have any other boss set foot in it.

Though trickily performed on two stage levels, The Bird Cage is all written at one. It has the arid, conscienceless professionalism of the hack; yet it fails less from being no good than from being no fun. The villain has almost every aspect of villainy except its fascination, the play every ingredient of melodrama except its punch.

All You Need Is One Good Break (by Arnold Manoff; produced by Monte Proser & Joseph Kipness) opened, read its notices, quickly and wisely closed. Then, a week later, it opened again.

Its hero (John Berry) is a lower-middle-class youth with a small mind and big ideas. He winds up in the clink, partly the victim of the world he inhabits, partly the victim of his own shoddy desires, chiefly the victim of Playwright Manoffs cluttered, cheapjack dramaturgy.

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