The Best Plays

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

Drama

"LAUGH, CLOWN, LAUGH!"--The familiar Punchinello plot made shiny and new by the skillful Belasco-Barrymore (Lionel) touch.

THE LADY--A cheerfully old-fashioned melodrama that stirs you in spite of yourself.

TARNISH--Two chapters of feminine amatory psychology--the pure and the stained--bound in a single volume by the love of one man.

RAIN--Probably the most unsparing portrait of a fallen woman on the current stage. Jeanne Eagels chiefly concerned.

SUN UP--Engrossing study of the primitive among the poor whites of the Carolina mountains.

IN THE NEXT ROOM--A successfully eerie descendant of The Bat dynasty of mystery plays.

SEVENTH HEAVEN--Absinthe, love, faith, and the War seen through the eyes of a girl of the Paris gutters.

Comedy

AREN'T WE ALL?--One of those drawing room trifles which make the epigram seem the worthiest pursuit of man.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC--Walter Hampden has made classic comedy of Rostand, one of the season's indispensables.

THE NERVOUS WRECK--Showing the influence of custard pie movies on the stage. Furiously funny farce about convalescence by necessity.

MEET THE WIFE--Hilarious discussion of the proper handling of a wife who has the urge to entertain visiting British novelists.

THE POTTERS--Vicious little jabs of satire at the aimless life of middle class America.

THE SWAN--Removing one wall of the palace and presenting intimate glimpses of European Royalty as they appear to each other.

SPRING CLEANING--Polished contrast of philosophy of the rich idle wife and the poor busy street walker. The husband acting as liaison officer.

Song and Dance

A New Year's resolution embracing a determination to see only the best in musical comedy would include the following entertainments: Poppy, Music Box Revue, Ziegfeld Follies, Topics of 1923, Wildflower, Mr. Battling Buttler, Runnin' Wild.

New Plays

The Other Rose. Those who journey to the Morosco Theatre for the next month or two may expect to be submerged quietly and comfortably in a wave of innocuous benevolence. Mr. Belasco has established there a sunlit sea of pleasantness, rippled by waves of wit and wafted fitfully over the audience. Unhappily, the waters of this wave are rather flat and dead. There is no swirl of red romance; there is no salt sting of savory satire. The play is just a trifle too harmless to be regarded seriously as amusement.

The plot revives the Wars of the Roses. Rose Coe and Rose Helen Trot are at odds over Tony Mason. When Fay Bainter (Rose Coe) appears in the first act in a blue and white checked gingham apron you could be morally sure she was going to win, even if her name hadn't been up in the lights outside. Henry Hull plays Tony and Carlotta Monterey the losing Rose. With such a group there really was no need for a plot; accordingly they all sit about the exquisite Belasco settings (Maine coast in summer) and simply spend three acts in engaging chatter. Excellent minor contributions are made by Effie Shannon as Tony's mother and by Andrew J. Lawlor, Jr., as the offensive younger brother of the winning Rose.

Alexander Woollcott: "An innocent revel, pleasantly played, and quite excruciatingly unimportant."

The Hippodrome

Transformed, It Displays Keith Vodvil

One either regarded the Hippodrome with juvenile ecstasy or profound distaste. There was no middle ground. It was the shrine of amusement which housed the private gods of Youth. Once boarding school began--and with it excursions, possibly furtive, to the Follies--these gods mourned another apostate.

Such at least was the smug sophistication of what some ill-informed individual was prompted to call the "leisure class."

Yet there were thousands upon thousands of eager grown-ups from the sparser population centers whose annual trip to New York was duly solemnized by an evening at the Hippodrome. Inspection of their reasons for and reactions from so doing might be deleterious to our National Pride. The fact remains that the Hippodrome came to be a definite landmark in the amusement education of every 100% American.

Last Winter devastating news spread across the country to the effect that the Hippodrome was to be destroyed in favor of a huge hotel. Agitated parents found themselves feverishly hiding newspapers from Eleanor and little Ned who had been promised a trip to the Hippodrome since year before last. The deal hung fire, the hotel plan was discarded, and E. F. Albee purchased the Hippodrome to display Keith vaudeville. Last week it opened.

The vaudeville interests have transformed the auditorium. They have eliminated the bulging stage apron and the billowing semicircle of curtain; they have cut the huge stage in half; they have added hundreds of seats. The Hippodrome is now the biggest theatre in the world with a capacity of 6,100.

They have installed in the basement a miniature village managed by midgets where mothers may check their children during the show.

Possibly the most arresting feature of the old entertainment was the disappearing diving girls. These girls ducked under and into one of an elaborate system of diving bells set in the bottom of the tank like inverted tumblers on legs and all connected by an elaborate system of electric communication. This whole mechanism has been discarded. It was in a way symbolic of a generously supplied--if somewhat ponderous--novelty.

The vaudeville interests have preserved the name and the shell of the Hippodrome. As a wholesale house for heavy spectacle it is no more.

W. R,