Theatre: New Plays: Nov. 22, 1926

Head Or Tail is a subjective play from the Hungarian of Laszlo Lakatos, presenting the perturbed mental state of a jealous husband. The hazard of guessing whether one’s wife is faithful or perfidious suggests the title, suggests also Act II in which agitate Andor Tamas (Philip Merivale) imagines that phases of his own marital relations are revealed in sundry characters of a popular-priced brothel. None other than Estelle Winwood plays his uncertain spouse. She also plays the Hungarian Rhapsody on a player-piano that in one performance, at least, failed to synchronize with her fingers. Such embarrassments, eve r-p resent threats in the theatre, are sometimes boons to bored audiences. Future performances should refine the generally crude staging; but it is doubtful whether the play, as written, can ever succeed in expressing with even moderate success, the cleverly conceived theme.

Gay Paree. The Great Temptations, having been despatched to rake in provincial shekels, Gay Paree was unloaded at the Winter Garden, where smoking is permitted. The Shubert machine knows its business, knows what the Winter Garden public wants for $5.50. It offers well-drilled squads of girls in conscientious exercises. It’ splashes the stage with prismatic voluptuousness. It jollies the audience. Charles (“Chic”) Sale appears in Yankee caricatures, a pleasant departure from the stale Jewish, Irish, Italian, Russian, Negro takeoffs. His comedy is the show’s high spot. There is a funny skit wherein a neglected wife rebels against the oft-repeated “Good night, Mother of Three” adieus of a husband who goes out every evening. She retaliates with, “Good night, Father of One.”

The Squall. The best stage storm of the season disrupts the serene domesticity of a Spanish household. From under the black clouds, into a country home, scurries a gipsy girl, fleeing from her man with a whip. The ladies of the household take her under their protection—foolishly, because the gipsy has more sex appeal than all the rest of the family put together. Within one year (intermission) she seduces the manservant, the son and the master of the house. And she does these things in the big parlor hall that gives on every room in the house. The ladies wax wroth. Blanche Yurka as the mistress of the household, becomes, at times, a tragic figure, notably at the end of Act II when she prays to the Virgin for strength to keep her Spanish down. A happy ending and retribution follow the return of the gipsy man with the whip for his “woman.” Effective staging surroundsthis cloud-lace fabric with an air of reality. Also Blanche Yurka can soar to glory on the wings of feeble dialogue. To those not too well acquainted with the ways of the theatre, The Squall will offer two and a half hours of simple, tense make-believe.

First Love.* The hero breathes “My Darling,” the heroine, “My Love.” They kiss, cuddle, coo, cuddle, kiss. . . . When the principles are not at it, the other characters in the play are telling one another how sweet it is. The audience, surfeited, looks on skeptically, for the kiss-cuddle-coo is supposed to have been continuous for three years, and in Paris. There is a father (Bruce McRae) who has ordered the hero-son out of the house for having loved the wrong girl, for having composed popular songs. The parent then falls in love with the girl himself, proving that the hero was right. On Fay Bainter’s arch pouting and ogling rests the burden of entertaining the audience through three word-puffed acts. The burden is too great, even though shared by Mr. McRae, famed fascinator.

Naked. A girl, frail, comes to detest herself, drinks poison, invents ax lovely lie of disappointed love to justify her conduct, clothe her unlovely nature with attractive personality. Doctors come to the rescue. Subsequent arrival of alleged betrayers strips her of the pretty lie, reveals her what she really is. The shame is top cruel. She drinks poison again, dies this time, confessing her naked self.

Behind the slim plot, through long-drawn-out dialogue, Italian Dramatist Pirandello’s philosophy of reality struggles to reveal itself. Facts are not reality, are merest illusions of the senses. Fiction of the imaginative mind is the only true reality. Hence the pity of it: a poor girl torn out of her last shred of beauty, revealed even in death, a sordid fact.

The audience fidgets, dwindles. The play means nothing to the unphilosophical. Of action there is practically nothing. Of emotion there is plenty, but what audience can sympathize with characters torn by the incomprehensible? Naked seems to be, in translation at least, a noble effort staggering beneath the weight of an idea too great for the strength of its art.

The Pearl of Great Price. Released, at last, from an eight year entanglement with red tape, The Pearl of Great Price reveals itself in the theatre, a cheaply glamorous morality spectacle. The Pearl, symbol of maidenhood, is sole heritage of a pulchritudinous orphan, Pilgrim. With zest, relish and a cast of two hundred, the production smacks its lips over the struggles of Greed, Idle Rich, Lust, Shame and the rest, to possess the dainty maiden’s treasure. In the course of an artful procession of temptations, Pilgrim, after standing naked for one coy half-second, despatches Lust. The court returns a verdict of “Not Guilty” because Mother appeared in a miraculous vision to testify that homicide was justified. Finally, in accordance with parental instructions, the Pearl is bestowed upon Love.

As a straight “girl show,” catering to the follies and foibles of tired business men, The Pearl Of Great Price might have come up to the best Shubert tradition. As a morality play, its sly emphasis upon the fleshly temptations, its substitution of “Mammy” sentimentality for virtue, its salacious exaltation of a physical technicality to the plane of spiritual value damn it. It is simply a huge hypocrisy parading under a thin veil of moral pretense.

Oh, Kay. Lest her personal charm fail to capture the audience’s entire sympathy, they have cast the beauteous Gertrude Lawrence as a bootlegger with good manners. The combination is too devastating. Hearts snap in all sections of the orchestra, balcony, gallery. Fortunately, George Gershwin is on hand to soothe the smitten with his own tender harmonies. A happy ending is served by Jimmy Winter (Oscar Shaw), pleasant Long Island hero, who saves the beauty from Federal Prohibition agents, clasps her to his heart. Guy Bolton and P. G. Wodehouse wrote a book that makes a lot of fun and even a little sense. The chorus, engaging band, steps high. Musical comedy hath few charms not ascribable to Oh, Kay.

Percy Hammond: “Gershwin’s score is a marvel . . . floated away on the canoodling notes of Maybe.”

*In Paris, they called it Pile ou Face (Tail or Head).