New Plays

East Lynne. William Winter it was who remarked that this play has caused more tears than the Civil War. It was first produced 64 years ago, and through all the remaining years of the last century extracted weeps and hisses from our forefathers. They say that wandering companies still play the gaudy narrative in wayside opera houses. It is safe to say that Manhattan has not seen a production for 20 years.

The present production is by way of being a burlesque. Ancients who witnessed reputable representations of this hardy heart attack state that this version is distinctly libelous. It was done to rouse two laughs where two tears flowed before. Therefore it was overdone. For about an act it was amusing. After that it became repetitious.

Mary Blair plays the role of Lady Isabel, who runs away with the mustached and booted villain and comes to no good end in Paris. Miss Blair is more often associated with the plays of Eugene O'Neill, having created more of his heroines than any other actress. She shows in East Lynne a comic talent which peeped but timidly from behind the truth-stained characters of this greatest dramatist.

Find Daddy. A frantic farce, about a baby that nobody wanted but everybody claimed, lasted just one week. It was perhaps the loudest performance this year and certainly the most athletic. Noise and perspiration, however, could not prevail. There was, nevertheless, one glowing line. The paternity of the housemaid's baby had just been fastened upon two married and apparently blameless males. "And to think," muttered the horrified heroine, "that both of them are Harvard men!"

The Trouper. There are three Nugents, and at least two of them are always connected with a production that bears the name of one of them. Kempy was the play in which they collaborated most successfully. In The Trouper Father J. C. Nugent and daughter Ruth Nugent read lines written by Father Nugent and son Elliott Nugent (who is playing The Poor Nut on tour). The play is about show folk and gleaned from the vast accumulation of trouping experience that is Nugent family history. It is not a very good play.

The title character, played by Mr. Nugent, arrives in a country village with a vagrant show troupe. There he finds his daughter, born 20 years before from a mother native of the village. The play then argues whether she shall stay among the whiskered rurals or set out on lifelong wanderings among the theatres. She does the latter. Ruth Nugent is this girl, pleasantly enough.

The Moon Is a Gong. John Dos Passos wrote this. As usual, he was annoyed at the time-annoyed because no matter how high a steeple you climb you never can strike the moon like a gong. Mr. Dos Passos' hero was not able to climb above convention either. The play is loud, violent, incoherent, with a character called "Third Young Man with a Cold-Cream Face."