Old Play in Manhattan

Come of Age (by Clemence Dane and Richard Addinsell) flopped when it was first produced on Broadway in 1934, with Judith Anderson in the leading role. Over the years, it has been mourned in certain circles as a work whose haunting beauty went generally unrecognized. Revived last week at Manhattan's City Center--once again with Actress Anderson--it turned out to be a piece of pretentious nonsense.

It shows the 17-year-old, 18th-century poet Thomas Chatterton winning from Death--in the moment of suicide--a chance to live again, so long as he keeps his past existence secret. Projected into the 20th century, he becomes the lover of a passionate, high-strung, middle-aged sophisticate. Finally, recalling and recounting his past, he is recalled by Death.

The story, told in doggerel verse against a background of music, makes hardly more sense as fantasy than as realism. Conceivably the doggerel expresses the rubbishy lives of the modern London sophisticates, while the hovering music symbolizes the lost world of poetry. But the actual effect is that of an oldtime, trashy silent movie, with the pianist dishing out lachrymose Tchaikovsky. Chatterton may have deserved a second life; this play about him did not.

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