New Plays

Ladies of the Evening. For a season or two, irreconcilables have been fuming at the Belasco tradition. "I'm going to get something on him. if it takes all season," remarked one. That was last year: and Mr. Belasco came through fairly favorably. This year, the skies have darkened. David Belasco produced Tiger Cats--a dull and savage diatribe against women. He produced The Harem--a. dull and dangerous farce about seduction. Finally, he has produced Ladies of the Evening, a play frankly, almost viciously, pornographic. Cognoscenti assert that Mr. Belasco has fared unfavorably in finance of late. He has turned to the last refuge, the bed, to feather his declining nest.

Harlots are the puppets of the piece. Jerry Strong, clubman, wagers he can reform a street walker. In the process, he falls in love with her in time to ring down as tawdry and dishonest a curtain as the Theatre has seen this year.

With the exception of James Kirkwood, as the clubman, the cast is selected with a characteristically canny eye. Edna Hibbard, as the honest, bitter cynic of the harlots, received the maximum applause.

In the interests of accuracy, it must be stated that much of the play was bitterly amusing. It will make money.

The New York World (in an editorial)-"Mr. Belasco has tried hard to make himself rich. He has made himself absurd and contemptible."

Topsy and Eva. Savage disagreement has arisen in regard to the merits of this much-delayed production. Chicago delayed it for nearly a year by liking it so much. Some of Manhattan liked it. Some of Manhattan said it was terrible. Accordingly, the only thing to do is to offer a description and let the reader decide.

It is old-fashioned in plot and jest. rude Tom's Cabin polished up and set to music, is the basis of the narrative. There is considerable Negro harmony and soft-shoe shuffling of eminent excellence. There is a troupe of English dancing girls without which few music shows nowadays are complete. There is a pretty prima donna who can sing and a mildly acceptable cast.

The Duncan sisters make the difference. It is the opinion of many, and with that judgment this department agrees entirely, that to hear the Duncan sisters harmonize is just as important as to subscribe to the Theatre Guild. The little Duncan is in blackface, playing Topsy. Most people find her funny.

The New York Times-"In brief, a reasonably discouraging musical play."

The New York Herald-Tribune--"Something akin to a triumph."

The Youngest. The thin and consciously smart figure of a comedy went down the receiving line last week. When they talked it over afterward, the opinion of those present was that under the slender smartness lay incipient anemia.

Philip J. Q. Barry wrote The Youngest--the same Philip J. Q. Barry whose You and I offered such pleasant promises. His second piece deals with a threadbare theme--the turning worm.

A young man wants to write. His family fly into rages. With the assistance of a young visitor and a legal technicality, the young man snatches the family purse-strings. He wriggles triumphantly from the bottom to the top of the family tree.

Henry Hull, probably the most engagingly agitated youth on our stage (unless it be Glenn Hunter), gave his usual full measure of amusement. Genevieve Tobin, a younger leading lady to whom some attribute considerable competence and others nothing but a pretty face, gave one of her less likable performances. Katherine Alexander, certainly more completely equipped as an actress, gathered most of the critical generosity in a secondary part.

Milgrim's Progress is obviously aimed at the immense population which has reacted so energetically to the racial humors of Abie's Irish Rose. It is the story of a Jewish family which has prospered and come to live luxuriously in the city. Poor old papa is disconsolate among the steam heating and elevators. Finally they return to rural quietude. Louis Mann plays papa with explosive and characteristic ingenuity.

The Bully. One of those throaty melodramas in which the ingenue is virtuous and the villain a fiend, came in with Christmas and will probably go out with the Old Year. Unwittingly, the virtuous child implicates herself in her master's villainies. Pearls--a great many pearls--are stolen. Emmett Corrigan, who should have known better, waded around in the shallows of the leading part. Several of the cast were almost criminally incompetent. The audience tittered.

The Habitual Husband. The same assembly of players, directors and guarantors who lately sponsored the distinguished Candida (The Actors' Theatre) opened their season of regular evening performances with one of the flimsiest and most inexpert productions that one can easily conceive.

Into an excessively modern, and rather stupid, marriage comes a third woman. The wife, discovering the situation, insists that her husband elope with his new lady. At the last moment, she can stand the strain no longer and accompanies the elopement. She breaks it up.

The germ of a smart, satirical idea died somewhere in the transposition of this play from the author's brain to the manuscript, to the stage. Instead of provocative and shrewd sophistication, it offered nothing but lifeless conversation. Such accomplished performers as Margalo Gillmore and Grant Mitchell seemed seriously at sea.

Betty Lee. A moderately dull musical comedy forced into furious and agreeable activity by desperate dancing--that is Betty Lee. A song or two that will serve and Hal Skelly and Joe E. Brown (he has a wide mouth) trying hard to squeeze comedy out of commonplaces--these help occasionally. Most of the singing is discouraging and the costumes something less than smart. There is a plot about a youth who boasted he could run and then was matched against a champion. The huge trousers sers of Mr. Brown are easily the most important feature of the entertainment tainment.

Old English. The distinguished Mr. Galsworthy wrote a strictly secondary play and the distinguished Mr. Arliss boosted it with his acting into the selected circle of plays that should be seen.

A long character study braced with certain small sinews of plot was the author's contribution. He visualized an old man -- tyrannical, wealthy, indomitable --the apoplectic patriarch whom the world recognizes as an English gentleman. He led this stubborn ruler into a shady financial transaction to insure the future of a son of his illegitimate child. He contrived to have him caught. He served him with one ast relentless dinner in which he ate sweetbreads, drank brandy, defied the doctor, died.

Winthrop Ames, one of our most selectively judicious producers, surrounded Mr. Arliss with a long and satisfactory company. Even in the raspingly British second act of the silly ass and arch girl sort, the players were usually above the manuscript. On the star's performance adjectives were tossed in an enthusiastic heap. He was furnished with opportunity to love, hate, eat, drink and die. These elemental attributes he interpreted with a gorgeous gusto, a decisive individuality which made the part one of Mr. Arliss's best since the days he did Disraeli.

Bluffing Bluffers was a minor grain in the Christmas grist. It started out to laugh at politics--usually not a difficult thing to do. After the first act, it slipped into melodramatic farce with all the values torn into broad comic strips and hurled heedlessly across the footlights. The tearers were a downtrodden doctor who sets himself up as the bunk boss of a small town, and a rich and vapid widow; the opposition was the Irish Imperator of the village. Occultism is included and a fake Hindu servant. Most of the acting was negligible.