New Plays

Across the Street. Apparently the rural drama is out to obliterate sex. That is the impression one gains from this new play of the small town. Author Purdy, won with his comedy-drama the prize of $500 offered by the Chautauqua circuit for the best play without sex; he earned every nickel of it. He walks around that tabooed subject more carefully than a cat around a saucer of cream.

Whatever love story is in the piece is let loose early and gotten over with hurriedly, as if the author suspected that something embarrassing might break out. The story concerns itself mainly with a young newspaperman sentenced by his father to learn journalism in Glendale, Vt, where they have a daily paper--:although the hamlet hardly seems large enough to support a weekly. Loathing the work, he secretly swaps jobs with the dreamy owner of the general store. In the course of conducting each other's business they run against the grafting selectmen.

The final act turns into an indignation meeting against the forces of evil, at which the audience itself become the seething citizenry. The first night gathering entered hilariously into the spirit of this trick effect, venting against the actors all the exasperation with which the play had filled them up to that point. When volunteers were asked to come forward and protest, Heywood Broun, critic of The New York World, rolled prodigiously forward, accompanied by Bide Dudley of The Evening World. The rotund Broun seemed as happy as a freshman at a college lark. Afterwards, declaring that "the very ineptitude of the piece rises to magnificence," he admitted that he would not have missed it for the world.

It is a machine-made play, performed by actors in the best clothing dummy style. Robert Emmett Keane, the Reading man, characterized by Critic Hammond as a "straw-hat comedian," signalizes every impending wise crack with a lift of the katy.

Vogues. Mile. Odette Myrtil plays the violin ingratiatingly, sings liquidly, acts vibrantly and altogether is mistress of the Gallic art of suggesting an amorous intrigue by a glance.

High in favor likewise are Fred Allen and Jimmy Savo, who have been provided in lieu of a comedy book. Allen's comic methods are pungent] Savo's dancing never misses a good stroke. They wander continually through the performance as the authors of the libretto, escaped from a lunatic asylum. There are the customary, inevitable skits of current Broadway attractions.

The Man Who Ate the Popomack.

This comedy seems deliberately intent on creating a malomorous reputation. It deals with the overpowering stench engendered by a rare and delicious fruit from China, which, when eaten (by two members of an English household)--permanently imbues them with the aura of a skunk. To inspire further jocularity, the men are compelled to wear diving suits to suppress the effluvia, while devoted friends visit them in gas masks. Eventually one of the men shoots himself, hounded to his grave by a smell.

The author, W. J. Turner, seems to seek the allegorical representation of the idea that only an outcast deserted by the squeamish mob, can be true to his own greatness. But he has smothered it in stale epigrams.

The Main Line. An attempt has been made here to depict the foibles of the smart set of Bryn Mawr, Philadelphia's fashionable suburb. The play finds everything to be rotten, spouts geysers of dialogue for reform. It is a department store of a play, dealing in everything from coffee to bootlegging. A choice feature is the persuasion of the authors--Grace Griswold and Thomas McKean--that blue bloods spend most of their time in the servants' quarters. At one point the cast is galvanized into startling action over a rum running plot. But they quickly relapse into their maundering cataleptic trance.