A New Play

The Right to Dream. What was generally hailed by reviewers as the worst play put on in Manhattan this season sidled in last week. It did not even have the merit of being so atrociously bad that it was funny. It was just dull, inept, feeble, groping, obfuscated. That is all. Author I. K. Davis starts out with an intrinsically interesting premise-- a protest against the workaday world that would force a man to the accumulation of money, thus smothering the spark of divine genius. In his play, the young man to whom he attributes genius shows not a flicker of it except through devoted championing by his actress-wife--and she seems to be merely parroting the author's own description of him. The young man, determining to conquer New York as a playwright, finds his plays promptly tossed back at him by commercial managers because they will not satisfy the gods of the box office. When he and his wife are on the verge of starvation, his mother-in-law harangues him into taking a lucrative position as editor of the more crimson type of magazine. They are now in comfort, but his yearning soul threatens to burn him up. He wants to do the finer and better things. Fortunately he is stopped in time. Discouraged by lack of recognition in the sphere he covets, he shoots himself where the brain is assumed to be. His body is brought in on a stretcher by the police--as an unexpected appetizer to a dinner party. Thus is the play put out of its misery. The Telegram and Evening Mail: "A weak, illogical concoction, marred by much gushing sentimentality." Alexander Woollcott: "An innocent, artless drama . . . invested with the flavor of private theatricals." New York Evening Post: "Miss Bertha Broad's performance of the heroine was fairly competent, but in no way remarkable." The New York Times: "Not sufficiently well characterized and well written to be important or very convincing."