The Theatre: The Best Plays: Nov. 23, 1925

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

SERIOUS

THE VORTEX—Drugs and dissipation softening the moral fabric of British semi-society.

A MAN’S MAN—An urban and native tale of thirty-dollar-a-week people in Manhattan; and how they fought to improve themselves and failed.

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED—Final performances of the California farm story in which the Italian master picked out a wife in a San Francisco spaghetti joint and married her by mail.

THE GREEN HAT—The yellow Hispano Suiza of Michael Arlen has driven up to the stage door and unloaded all its politely worthless characters.

YOUNG WOODLEY—Glenn Hunter participating in a story of sex and sorrow in an English boarding school.

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN—Tramps in the windy West; their curses and their chivalry.

CANDIDA—Shaw’s extraordinary comedy back to town for a few weeks with Peggy Wood.

LESS SERIOUS

THE LAST OF MRS. CHEYNEY— Reviewed in this issue.

CRADLE SNATCHERS—The immensely successful and slightly rancid history of three middle-aged women and three college boys.

THE POOR NUT—College boys in their own environment, making Phi Beta Kappa and winning track meets; improbable but entertaining.

ARMS AND THE MAN—Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne giving their usual exceptional performances in Shaw’s early satire on war.

IS ZAT SO?—The parable of a couple of prizefighters who found themselves in society.

THE BUTTER AND EGG MAN—A shrewd and tingling satire of theatrical business when the shoestring on which it is conducted breaks.

MUSICAL

Wit and beauty are most successfully captured in: Big Boy, Artists and Models, The Student Prince, Rose-Marie, Princess Flavia, Louie the 14th, Sunny and No, No Nanette.