First Nights

Humoresque. Mrs. Sarah Kantor slipped out into the darkness of the ghetto, leaving her husband, one son, and a stray dog asleep in one cot, her daughter in another, and her favorite son whimpering for a violin in another. A few minutes later she reappeared, triumphantly bearing a four-dollar violin.

The violin turned out to be a good investment. In the second act its successor is bringing big dividends from audiences flocking to hear the young Yiddish genius. Unhappily, the war has meanwhile started and the violinist feels the call to arms louder than the whispering of his muse, or the terrified protectiveness of his mother. At the end of the act he shakes off her imploring arms and starts off for the war against oppression.

All through the last act he is still starting. Everyone, on and off the stage, has a good cry. But the play gets no further. In fact, the play never does get much of anywhere after the first excellent act. What saves it is that no one cares about anything but the astonishing excellences of Miss Laurette Taylor as the infinitely pathetic mother.

Alexander Woolloott: ". . . . The bright unwinking star of Laurette Taylor never shone more clearly."

Hey wood Broun: ". . . We have never seen her play better."

Burns Mantle: ". . . . Characterization of the very first quality."

Roger Bloomer. This is another play, like Johannes Kreisler, in the course of which innumerable scenes come popping out at you from all over the stage. They are expressionistic scenes, too, looking like nothing in heaven or earth except dreams of the central character--whose point of view is something to marvel at.

The play recounts the mental agonies of a groping adolescent from Iowa who expects wonders of life and can make none of his dreams come true. Iowa and his 100% American home prove too much for him--par-ticularly after an unsuccessful attempt has been made to condemn him to Yale and he flies to New York. There he encounters another rebellious but less illusionary young person from home--a girl who finds life a hoax and love nothing but filth.

He has a series of disillusionments, in chance meetings with street- walkers, bums, financiers. At one point he tries a bottle of rat poison, but finds in it not oblivion but a stomach ache. The girl is more successful in her choice of poisons, and dies on his hands--finding some satisfaction in the reflection that she dies clean. He is unfortunately jailed; and is visited by his father, who tries unsuccessfully to bring him back to Iowa. The play ends up with an astounding nightmare, in the course of which all the minor characters dance about him, tempting or mocking him, and finally give place to the girl, who, to some extent, cheers him up.

New York is identified as a place full of " women, death and garbage." Yale University is grotesquely libelled in the person of a majestic creature (the villain) who catalogues his excellences at the slightest provocation. His scenes with Roger are among the play's major absurdities.

There are moments of great power. It is a genuine tragedy that the theme and its treatment are unworthy of the courageous experiment of its production.

J. Rankin Towse: ". . . an indefinite spectacle of insurgent youth."

Alexander Woollcott:". . . . A vague, incoherent young play; prolix, unedited, disheveled."

Alan Dale: ". . . . One of those jigsaw puzzle plays."

Morphia. Lowell Sherman, master-villain, appears at special matinees in Morphia, Viennese play, in which dope plays a prominent and timely part.