The Theater: Old & New Play in Manhattan

Magic (by G. K. Chesterton) and Hello, Out There (by William Saroyan) provide a double bill that prompts a single verdict. Both playwrights are much better at dialogue than drama. Saroyan’s one-acter is more rewarding because it’s simpler and more human. It tells of a guy (Eddie Dowling) in a small-town Texas jail who, before he is killed by a mob, talks through the bars of his cell with the jail’s wispish slavey of a cook (Julie Haydon). Theirs is a brief rapprochement, a doomed romance, of two desperately lonely, anonymous souls. But the scene, quilted down with words, is merely touching where it ought to be intense.

Magic, which devout Catholic Chesterton wrote in 1913, preaches religious faith through tricky supernaturalism. A conjurer’s magic confounds, and in one case deranges, a roomful of skeptics—worldly priest, agnostic doctor, materialistic U.S. businessman. There are some witty lines, including the famous “I hate a quarrel because it always interrupts an argument.” But the play dies on its feet, having talked itself to death.