New Plays in Manhattan

Jane (adapted by S. N. Behrman from a Somerset Maugham short story) is urbane but upsy-downsy drawing-room comedy. Its three acts of intended laughter rather suggest three sets of tennis, with Jane narrowly losing the match, 6-2, 1-6, 4-6. Jane (Edna Best) is a rich, frumpish, middle-aged Liverpool widow, hard of head and blunt of speech. In a jolly first act she descends on her London relatives to announce that she is marrying a penniless architect half her age. There is consternation, opposition, and the sense of a cheerful future for the play, if perhaps a checkered one for the heroine.

In Act II, Jane's talent for dropping hot bricks has apparently made her the rage of London, though nothing is actually shown but her incurring the rage of Londoners. There is no verve in it: things merely dribble along, with Jane tiring of society and the young husband tiring of Jane. In the last act, by flanking Jane with a worldly writer who might be Maugham (Basil Rathbone) and a philandering newspaper tycoon (Howard St. John), the play manages a few rallies, but never quite comes right.

Only the air of the drawing room persists to the end; despite Edna Best's smooth playing, the charm of Jane fades out. Halfway along, she stops seeming faintly absurd and at once stops seeming alive. And she doesn't cut a wide enough swath, cause enough contretemps, shake up enough lives. In the end, the strong point of the play seems almost as much comment as character.

Gertie (by Enid Bagnold), a frail, younger English sister to Jane, paid Broadway the briefest of visits. A generally listless comedy, it concerned a family that would soon run out of money, and the plight of its two daughters in an England that seemed already to have run out of men. Its one real claim to attention was the Broadway debut, in the title role, of British Cinemactress Glynis (State Secret) Johns, who gave a highly engaging performance.

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