The Theatre: New Plays: Jan. 14, 1924

Kid Boots. In these columns last week was a comment to the effect that Mary Jane McKane was the captain of the current musical troupe. This statement is hereby withdrawn. Kid Boots deposes Mary Jane; furthermore it numbers only Sally and Good Morning Dearie among its competitors in general excellence for five years past.

Eddie Cantor is, of course, the master of ceremonies. He is inordinately funny. The only criticism brought against him was that his virtually permanent possession of the stage made a monotony of merriment.

Mary Eaton’s name is prominently displayed in the electric illumination above the playhouse. Her fine flavor of respectability made an excellent foil for Cantor’s semi-Rabelaisian style of turbulence.

The remainder of the show is spread with a prodigal profusion that only Florenz Ziegfeld can maintain. There are numerous minor luminaries of musical comedy in the cast, an unobtrusive plot, a succession of amiable melodies. In fact the only objection that can be raised against the show is the practical impossibility of obtaining tickets.

The New York Herald: “Kid Boots will more than fill the void left in our midst by Sally.”

The Spook Sonata. August Strindberg, Eugene O’Neil, Robert Edmond Jones, Kenneth MacGowan and Clare Eames contributed their considerable capabilities toward the production of this play. When it was all over and the curtain down, the rest of the group might well have turned and leveled accusing fingers at Strindberg. He wrote a play which is virtually incomprehensible. Various supernatural beings assemble and a certain villainous ancient is strangled by a mummified old woman. In the final act the hero admonishes the audience to be good because man’s sins will seek him out. While the moral is clear, the preceding fable lurks in a deep obscurity.

Alexander Wollcott; ”Seditiously eccentric, elliptical and singularly baffling.”

The Song and Dance Man. George M. Cohan sits on the box and drives a triple tandem. He is author, producer and star.

AUTHOR. Mr. Cohan has selected a theme which he knows most minutely. He has written of the life, the longing, the success, the disappointment of the Theatre. He has selected a character which he himself played in real life—the song and dance man of the vaudeville circuits. He has posited as his thematic philosophy the principle that people of the Theatre can never shift allegiance to love or to the world of business. After years of waiting, his song and dance man hears the knock of opportunity on the door that leads to Broadway success. Failing miserably in his tryout, he enters business to pay a debt. Three years later, a completely successful man of affairs, he climbs down from his office stool and returns to the vagabond life of the meaner music halls.

Love interest is reserved for the little girl who has her chance coincidentally with his. Five years later she is the reigning success of New York. Her artist fiance persuades her to leave the stage. Her old song and dance man turns up from nowhere, tells his story, persuades the artist that the girl’s true happiness lies jointly in marriage and musical comedy.

PRODUCER. Mr. Cohan’s genius glows least brilliantly in his production. His settings are only moderately effective; his cast, uneven; his direction, occasionally rheumatic.

ACTOR. There have been those who questioned his competence as an actor. Even the most meticulous of these bounded onto the band wagon after the opening performance. Mr. Cohan gives as shrewd, as amusing, as sentient a performance as any yet revealed this season.

Heywood Broun: “The best thing which Cohan has written for the Theatre since Seven Keys to Baldpate . . . The performance is perfect.”

The Best Plays

These are the plays which in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important:

Drama

THE BLUE BIRD—The fantastic magnificence of Maeterlinck in a conspicuously well-dressed revival.

THE LADY—The drumhead of old-fashioned melodrama perfectly pounded by Mary Nash and a well trained troupe.

LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH—Largely owing to the performance of Lionel Barrymore, the old, old story of the woebegone clown is again successfully in our midst.

IN THE NEXT ROOM—For those to whom mystery is the salt of theatrical diversion.

ROSEANNE—An admirable interlude, if your interest in Negroes extends beyond Cakewalk comedy.

RAIN—A highly sexed and angry torrent against South Sea missionaries. Jeanne Eagels guides the flood with notable distinction.

SAINT JOAN—Bernard Shaw according the Theatre Guild the honor of first presenting to the world his characteristic chronicle of the Maid.

SUN UP—A cruder side of American life among the poor whites of the Southern mountains.

TARNISH—Showing the crop of tares which grow in the fields where wild oats fall.

Comedy

CYRANO DE BERGERAC—Walter Hampden’s virtuosity astonishing even his most fervent admirers in Rostand’s modern classic.

MEET THE WIFE—A satirical domestic farce on the trouser-wearing wife.

THE NERVOUS WRECK—Slapstick rattling against the ribs of the determined valetudinarian.

THE POTTERS—Vivid flashes of satire striking at the all-American domestic dumb-bell—the husband.

THE SWAN—Like taking tea with Royalty. Discusses the ethics of marriage between a Princess and a tutor.

THE SONG AND DANCE MAN—Reviewed in this issue.

AREN’T WE ALL?—Strictly English satire on the more obvious impossibilities of the marriage custom.

Song and Dance

Epicures in musical comedy will find the following items from the current menu most delectable: Kid Boots, Poppy, Mary Jane McKane, The Music Box Revue, The Ziegfeld Follies, Runnin’ Wild.