--- description: Most sensational: The Children's Hour (sex in a girl's school) and Noel Coward's Point Valaine (sex in the Caribbean). Biggest box-office attraction: Robert Sherwood's The Petrified... title: Theater: Best Plays in Manhattan image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # Theater: Best Plays in Manhattan by [TIME](/author/time/) Feb 25, 1935 5:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Feb 25, 1935 5:00 AM CUT Most sensational: The Children’s Hour (sex in a girl’s school) and Noel Coward’s Point Valaine (sex in the Caribbean). Biggest box-office attraction: Robert Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest, in which Leslie Howard runs into a mob of itinerant gangsters. Most popular musical: Anything Goes!, with Cole Porter music and Victor Moore as Public Enemy No. 13\. Most spectacular performers: Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never! and Katharine Cornell as Juliet. Funniest comedies: Laburnum Grove (suburban British nonsense) and Three Men on a Horse (picking the ponies). Oldest in town: Tobacco Road, Georgia back-country drama still going strong in its 14th month. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6753808/theater-best-plays-in-manhattan/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6753808/theater-best-plays-in-manhattan/"},"headline":"Theater: Best Plays in Manhattan","datePublished":"1935-02-25T05:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-28T15:25:43.090Z","description":"Most sensational: The Children's Hour (sex in a girl's school) and Noel Coward's Point Valaine (sex in the Caribbean). Biggest box-office attraction: Robert Sherwood's The Petrified...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6753808/theater-best-plays-in-manhattan/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6753808/theater-best-plays-in-manhattan/","name":"Theater: Best Plays in Manhattan"}}]}] ```