The Theatre: First Nights

ANYTHING MIGHT HAPPEN—Edgar Selwyn has written a comedy of mannerly intoxication. Anything might happen, but what actually does is rather amusing than important. Two of Manhattan’s most impeccable recently-jilted (Roland Young and Leslie Howard) become inextricably involved with each other’s fiancees until the last act, when an extensive readjustment takes place.

Most of the hilarity centers about a quart bottle of champagne, on which one of the young blades (Mr. Young and one of the ex-fiancées (Estelle Winwood) get unwarrantably but agreeably mellow. Other indignities offered the recent amendment are highballs in the first act, cocktails before the champagne, and a pitcher of some obscure intoxicant in a restaurant scene.

One of the notable features of the play is Leslie Howard’s anglicised delivery of American colloquialism. Another is a polite flirtation in a taxicab, to the accompaniment of a clicking meter. The weather is unpleasant in the first act, but the rain is not nearly as wet as that in the play named after it.

Heywood Broun: “. . . . inconsequential plan.”

Alexander Woollcott: “. . . intricate and intermittently amusing farce.”

John Corbin: “… a phantasmagoria of off-again-on-again nightmare.”

MISTER MALATESTA—If everything happened to the audience that Mr. Ricciardi (author and principal actor) intended should happen, there would be a sustained sound of laughter bubbling up through tears. It is another Abie’s Irish Rose, with one of the nationalities somewhat altered. The Abie in this case is an Italian immigrant who has acquired wealth and a resolute Hibernian spouse. The attendant complications need scarcely be enumerated. They include the intrusion on the wife’s well-ordered domain of organ-grinders and spaghetti-jugglers from Mr. Malatesta’s laborious past. They further include a titled wooer for the daughter of the family and all manner of familiar domestic difficulties. The formula has been working well for a good many years now. It may well work again.

THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE—John E. Kellerd is appearing in special matinees of a new dramatization of the familiar story by Robert Louis Stevenson. Emphasis is placed less on the romantic phase of the situation and more on the mental struggle of Dr. Jekyll than in the former dramatization. It is maintained that Stevenson’s chief object was to emphasize the moral effect of the habit of evil on a character normally good.

THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOF and THE LADY FROM THE PROVINCES— Russian holds no further terrors. But the astonishing histrionic agility of the Muscovites does. It is in a sense a relief to feel that they have no further versatilities with which to confound one.

Their last bill is ideally constituted to illustrate the virtuosity to which a great repertory theatre alone can attain.

Three scenes are represented from Dostoievsky’s prodigious novel The Brothers Karamazof. In the first Moskvin expresses with astonishing poignancy the mental agony of a weak and inadequate soul after an insult from the drunken Dmitry. In the last Katchalof gives the first complete expression to the power which makes him the greatest of Russian Hamlets. He is alone on the stage for a quarter of an hour, as the half-mad Ivan, whose brother is being tried for the murder of his father, and who sees the whole world and its meaning sliding through his fingers.

The second selection from The Brothers Karamazof consists in a colloquy between the saintly Karamazof brother and the neurotic cripple, Lise (Lydia Korenieva), a brilliant interpretation of a mind running wild.

In The Lady from the Provinces the Russians begin unexpectedly looking on the bright side of things. It is an uproarious and not very distinguished comedy by Turgenieff It varies between slapstick farce and French light comedy. Mme. Olga Knipper-Tchekova and Mr. Stanislawski appear as the coy wife of a provincial official and the goutily affectionate nobleman whom she makes a fool of quite adequately.

John Corbin: “. . . . new triumphs of their art.”

Alan Dale: “. . . . another touch of artistic paprika.”