Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Oct. 13, 1930

Mrs. Moonlight. Before her daughter was born, Sarah Moonlight (Edith Barrett) made a wish on a necklace owned by her Scotch nurse: that she would never look any older. Sarah was then 23. The tragedy of her perpetual youth dawned upon her when she was 28, her husband (Sir Guy Standing) 44. At that point she ran away from home, letting it be understood that she had taken her life. In Act II—17 years later—she still looks 23, younger than her daughter to whom she returns incognito and from whom she steals the affections of a worthless young man. Then she disappears, reappears— in Act III—an octogenarian, a little tired, but still looking 23. Her doddering husband dies in her arms, she dies out of sympathy. The nurse (Haidee Wright), having evidently wished on the necklace for eternal life, survives. Only in the second act does Mrs. Moonlight seem anything like plausible. The supporting characters generally seem as puzzled as the audience about the proper attitude to be taken toward the portent they are witnessing. But the play again proves the dramatic theorem that if you want to make any audience blow its nose and wipe its eyes, have the principals sing the same songs and say the same lines in the last act as they have previously sung and said in their youth—way back in Act I. Nine Till Six is dubiously distinguished by the fact that it has an all-female cast. The scene is laid in a London dress shop. The story is about a salesgirl who, because-she-likes-nice-things, steals, is detected, repents. For those interested in the inner workings of a dress house this play might have some worth, otherwise it is simply dull. Auriol Lee, as the proprietress, handles her part with considerable dignity and skill.

One, Two, Three! and The Violet.

These two little one-act plays are the sort of things Professor George Pierce Baker’s solemn young men at Harvard were trying to write 15 and more years ago. They seem easy to write, but not so in fact. They are quite civilized, the latest offerings in the U. S. of urbane Hungarian Ferenc Molnar.

Because French farce tends to be almost entirely froufrou, the impression of the evening’s entertainment is that both pieces are very slight and very stagy. But they are also very pleasant. The curtain-raiser, The Violet, is concerned with the trials of a theatrical casting director who becomes weary of the blandishments and caresses which shameless young women, seeking employment, lavish upon him. Changing places with his composer, he is astonished to find that Ilona Stobri (Ruth Gordon) is attracted to him rather than to the one whom she believes is the director. She gets the job. To Ruth Gordon (Serena Blandish, Saturday’s Children) went kudos for making a triviality a delight.

One, Two, Three! has for its principal character one Nordson (Arthur Byron, warden of The Criminal Code), motor tycoon, whose young U. S. guest has secretly married a taxidriver. It takes Mr. Byron upwards of an hour and a great deal of telephoning and ordering about to get the driver transformed into a gentleman financier, suitable to the young lady’s parents, whose arrival is imminent.

Mr. Gilhooley. This play stands as proof that a novel can be successfully translated into the dramatic form. Frank B. Elser, longtime New York city-editor of the Associated Press, author of one worthy book called The Keen Desire, onetime (1904) co-editor with George Jean Nathan of the Cornell Widow, has made a play from Liam O’Flaherty’s novel that has a beginning, a middle, an end. It is the story of how Mr. Gilhooley (Arthur Sinclair), a hearty, middle-aged Dubliner, came to live with a girl who was hopelessly in love with a man who had jilted her. When Mr. Gilhooley found that she was thinking of leaving him, he raged, wheedled, offered to marry her. Finally the girl— Helen (“Act of God”—) Hayes — did leave him; but she came back. And when she came back Mr. Gil hooley strangled her and shot himself. Both principals give an excellent ac count of themselves: Arthur Sinclair, strong, decent, generous; Miss Hayes, frustrated, impetuous, affecting. Many a Gaelophile had an evening’s entertainment just listening to a lot of good Irish ac cents. Happily, Miss Hayes did not at tempt the brogue. Arthur Sinclair (McDonnell), 47, is a Dubliner by birth, studied for the bar, abandoned the legal profession when he was 17 to join the famed Irish Players at the Abbey theatre. In 1911 he made his U. S. debut in The Rising of the Moon. He later appeared in The Playboy of the Western World. At the premiere a large body of truculent, transplanted Hibernians rioted in the theatre, tossed overripe fruit & vegetables at the actors because the play presented “an Irish girl in the situation of remaining all night with a man not her husband.” Mr. Sinclair has since revisited the U. S. six times. His fifth visit was in The Merry Wives of Gotham, in which, to his displeasure, he was to take the part of Seamus O’Briskey. Bitterly Mr. Sinclair protested that there was no such name in all Ireland. The author then admitted that he had coined the name to rhyme with whiskey. Author and actor compromised on another spirit, the character became Seamus O’Tandy. Last time Actor Sinclair appeared in the U. S. (1927) he took part in two well-received plays by Sean O’Casey: Juno & The Paycock, The Plough & The Stars. Bad Girl is another novel which is plausible in its dramatized version. Season before last the book ranked as a best seller, later vying in popularity with The Specialist, the poesy of Edgar Guest and the Holy Bible. Because the story of the book was thin, most of its action could be retained in the play. This commonplace idyll of the Bronx begins with the very clinical seduction of Dot (Sylvia Sidney) by Eddie (Paul Kelly) in his hall-bedroom. They get married, await the birth of their child. Each, fearing that the other does not want the baby, pretends distress at its imminence. Not until after the child has been born—on-stage, by means of shadowgraph—and after a great deal of advice from Edna (Charlotte Winters), a well-meaning friend, do the inarticulate young couple reach a happy understanding. The shortcomings of Bad Girl are not attributable to poor stagecraft or bad acting, but to the triteness and insignificance of the characters, story, dialog. Assuming that all of God’s creatures lead lives that are worth writing about, it is conceivable that Vina Delmar’s unimportant boy and girl could be made fictional people, who would hold the attention of intelligent novel-readers or playgoers. But although the author—who also helped write the play—has reported with infinite care the humdrum speech and actions of her characters, she has failed to make any part of their dull lives seem deeply significant. If, as some critics advised, the ghastly hospital episode were omitted from the play, the drama would never reach any height at all. Roadside is written and played with intense and commendable sincerity. Playwright Lynn Riggs has written the saga of a Texas superman who wears a 10-gal. hat, bursts out of gaols, woos and wins Miss Ruthelma Stevens (the comely somnambulist of Hotel Universe). Unfortunately, the speeches and posturings which the cast must affect are not of the sort which result in success in the theatre. Roadside must be recorded as one of the few missteps of Producer Arthur Hopkins.

* Last year, while playing in Coquette, Helen Hayes (Mrs. Charles MacArthur), an expectant mother, left the cast. The show closed without notice. Deciding whether or not the unemployed actors should receive extra pay, Actors Equity had to decide whether or not the baby was “an Act of God” (TIME, Oct. 7, 1929). Equity sidestepped, gave the actors two weeks’ salary on the grounds that the producer could have hired a substitute lead if warned.