The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Oct. 31, 1927

The Ivory Door. A play which may perhaps grow dear to high school graduating classes galled critics. In it they saw the doleful spectre of A. A. Milne burlesquing himself unconsciously. The Ivory Door, shockingly sweet, extracted from flabby matrons purrs of “adorable.”

The story tells of a prince who went through the mysterious portals of the title and came back a human being. A beautiful princess is properly provided. Searching reality, the prince has found romance. His people, viciously resenting his likeness to themselves rather than to their cherished fancy of a gold & purple ruler, exiled him.

The undertones of the play are powerful, startling, exquisite. As overwritten by Mr. Milne, overacted by Henry Hull, overproduced, it becomes a despair to the intelligent, most of whom honor Mr. Milne at his best;* and Henry Hull likewise (Lulu Belle). Mr. Hull mincing with earnestness, gurgles: “I am only a young man and I want to know. . . .” Helen Chandler, pitched into the role of a romantic maiden after two days’ rehearsal, trembled prettily.

Weather Clear, Track Fast. Anything that can be as tragic as are slow race horses to so many people can also be funny if viewed from a slightly different angle. Horse race plots are always simple, too, and need not weigh heavily on the gallery’s mind. This one, as always, tells how the villain tried by treachery to keep the hero’s horse from coming first. As an undistinguished fable of the race track, salted smartly with curious slang and nimble humor, the farce does well enough. Jum Bubbles, Negro, inserted as a tap dancer, stole the spectators’ attention from the story.

The Belt. If Henry Ford can take time enough off from supervision of his new motor car, he can see a new playwright* thumbing his nose at him (both hands), wiggling & waggling his fingers. Would Mr. Ford be interested? Many people thought not. He might see himself (unmistakably, although he is called simply “The Old Man”) facing a revolt of his workmen with nine months’ starvation before them as the works shut down. Previously they have been deadened to sub-mediocrity by the ceaseless sameness of their years of labor; finally, militia marches them to jail. There is also some sex. Moments of engrossing writing; moments of shrewd, imaginative staging scarcely salvage the stormy whole. The title is derived from a strip which runs materials through the factory from the tangled elements to the finished automobile, ready for F.O.B.

Love in the Tropics, a steam-heated drama of love in the tropics, was trite torment.

Out of the Night is pretty bad. It tells of a murder in a Maine hunting lodge; points the grisly finger of suspicion at nearly everybody and finally solves the situation by showing that there was a radio transmitter in the room when the murder happened, and the police were listening intently all the time. All this produces an alternating current of shiver and laugh, but none too strong a current.

Interference. In England they commit murder more graciously than we do. Instead of a spouting pistol or an ax, this able mystery depends on prussic acid; the actress dies without a murmur. She dies in full view of the audience and lies dead cross a lounge for a good part of the second act. This gives the Inspector a chance to fasten suspicion firmly on the hero, who, innocent, suspects his wife. She was once married to an amorous vagabond, who turned over her love letters to the villainess. After a peaceful period of blackmail this noisome character was about to publish the letters, thereby scorching the starchy reputation of the hero, famed physician. Enter the vagabond with prussic acid.

Vagabonds are traditionally saints in disguise. This saint was disguised, among other things, by an enlarged artery from sustained intoxication. There was a good deal of question whether or not he would last through the play; and a certainty he would die directly afterward. As played by the inevitably expert A. E. Matthews* the audience were pleased that he lasted through the play; the other good performance was A. Wotner’s: English, courageous, cool and neatly creased.

Skin Deep. A good playwright and a good actress are herein caught off their guard. Lynn Starling (who wrote Meet the Wife) and Chrystal Herne (who gave such an unerring performance in Craig’s Wife) are not at their best these evenings. One is led to suspect that the fault is chiefly Mr. Starling’s; he has given Miss Herne the rueful role of a wife whose husband is not fond of her. Chiefly because she had a mass of money, she is able to lure him from the clutches of an expansive soprano. All this is done against an indolent blue California background; and Reginald Owen, as the husband, protests and sneezes neatly through his duties.

The Good Hope. Eva Le Gallienne opened the season of her Civic Repertory Theatre with a veteran drama of the Dutch, little known in the U. S. Herman Heijermans wrote it in bitter protest that sailors must die in rotten ships because rotten ships made more money for their owners. Produced 27 years ago, the play roused Dutch lawmakers, and laws were passed to save the sailors’ lives. They were roused by a simple fishing village tale; through which the church bell tolls to tell of deaths at sea. Down to the sea in a rotten ship go the sailors the audience has come to know in the opening acts. In the last act they do not come back from the storm. Wives weep and mothers mourn.

To the staccato modern mind the play may seem a trifle sluggish. The story idles comfortably around the streets and hearths of the village, waiting while the author labors deftly with the eccentricities and the quaintness of his characters. For its salt and its simplicity, the play is valuable; and for the performances supplied by Miss Le Gallienne and her able troupe—who give a repertory of the best drama for the lowest prices that can be found in a Manhattan season.

Best Plays in Manhattan

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

SERIOUS

PORGY—Negro song and sorrow notably produced at the Guild Theatre.

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE—Ibsen revived by Walter Hampden; sanely, studiously.

THE LETTER—Katherine Cornell recounting why she killed her lover.

CIVIC REPERTORY THEATRE—Reviewed in this issue.

MELODRAMA

BROADWAY—Laughter behind a night club’s scenes; life lived at the point of a gun.

INTERFERENCE—Reviewed in this issue.

THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAN— Court records of a rousing murder.

DRACULA—In which the dead live and the living destroy death.

THE SPIDER—The magician’s murder mystery.

FUNNY

BURLESQUE—A drunkard’s love story while the burlesque show goes on.

THE ROAD TO ROME—All’s fair in love and war—particularly Jane Cowl.

THE COMMAND TO LOVE—In which the diplomat says in effect: “I regret I have but one sin to commit for my country.”

THE SHANNONS OF BROADWAY— A wise vaudeville team goes into country hotel business.

MUSICAL

For lingerie, laughter, lullabies: The Mikado, Chauve-Souris, A Night in Spain, Good News, Manhattan Mary, Hit the Deck.

*Plays: Wurzel-Flammery; Belinda; Mr. Pim Passes By; The Truth about Blayds. Books, principally for children: When We Were Very Young; Winnie-the-Pooh ; Now We Are Six (dedicated to Christopher Robin, son of Author Milne, with whom he is very affectionate).

*Paul Sifton, journalist; no Jew.

*Bull Dog Drummond, Spring Cleaning, The Last of Mrs. Cheney.