New Plays

Easter and One Day More. The first of these is by Strindberg and the second by Joseph Conrad, and the two were introduced as companion pieces by The Stagers. Michael Strange--she who is Mrs. John Barrymore--made her first important professional appearance in the former and quite confounded the obstinates who had seen her play a small part in a summer stock company last July and said she could not act. She was not exceptional, but she was good.

Easter is a confused parable about a family whose father was in jail because of the unfortunate results of dipsomania. The same strain of insanity runs in the daughter's blood. In her semi-bemused conversation, the playwright has set the sharpest jewels of his philosophy. Some of the jewels did not twinkle very clearly. Easter is symbolic, Continental, difficult, and not particularly stimulating to the casual U. S. mind. Which may prove to certain erudites that it is a good play.

The Conrad piece is a sea sketch about a wandering son home after 16 years. It is in a mood made familiar by the short sea plays of Eugene O'Neill. And in this case it is by no means stubborn patriotism that encourages the report that the O'Neill plays are considerably superior.

The Girl Friend. The movement for smaller and smarter musical comedies which various producers have contemplated since Sunny eliminated competition in the more spacious field, has at last unearthed a good one. The Girl Friend is not guaranteed unconditionally, but it offers a consistently agreeable display. It has good music and unquestionably the best lyrics in town. It has a sound enough set of jokes and more than the usual allotment of brisk dancing. Eva Puck and Sam White, vaudeville favorites, are the featured entertainers. They too, if not supreme, are soundly satisfactory. They tell the story of a chicken-rancher on Long Island who became a champion six-day bicycle rider. And of his girl, who was so dumb that when he took her to The Big Parade he had to buy her a flag.

Hush Money. Justine Johnstone, once a glorified girl of Mr. Ziegfeld's, returns as an actress. It may be stated without reserve that Miss Johnstone is the most beautiful blond leading woman in the land. She is not the best actress, but she is easily good enough for this inconspicuous little crook play. Miss Johnstone plays the fiancee of a young man with a prison record. Practically the entire remainder of the cast is bent upon hurling him back to the gaol. A diamond necklace is stolen and things look pretty sour for him. But he picks the very necklace out of the chief detective's pocket just in time for the final happy curtain.

Rainbow Rose. In TIME for Aug. 24 you will find a comedy called A Lucky Break marked unsatisfactory. The comedy now reappears with music added and remains strictly routine. It is about a rich man who discovered that his old home town loved him for himself and not his money. Fair music and moderately adept performers are included. One imitation monkey-dance by Hansford Wilson is all that mattered much.

Juno and the Paycock. Great has been the excitement in Britain over Sean O'Casey, plumber. Mr. O'Casey put by his wrenches and his putty one day to write a play about Irish politics. So fervently did Dublin approve that London saw the play, approving also. Now comes the Manhattan production. Two things interfered with enjoyment of this local version. One is unfamiliarity with Irish politics and the other the not particularly capable production.

In this enlightened land we do not shoot people because they are Republicans. When you call a man an Englishman in Dublin you have to say it with a smile. Juno and the Paycock is a cruel satire on these things. The leading figure of the play is a drunken, shiftless, swaggering braggart, who rolls homeward mumbling of Irish liberty as his son lies bullet-riddled down the road.

Augustin Duncan plays this childish alcoholic rather too slowly and exactly. In the rest of the cast there is a variety of Irish accent and a mingling of good acting and bad. "Juno" is a woman's name and "Paycock" is vulgate for "Peacock".

Ghosts. Some half dozen Ibsen plays* have been stirred from their slumber this season and. presented to an inquiring public. Of these Hedda Gabler, which still lingers for special matinees, was the most satisfactory. This version of Ghosts is patchy, with a magnificent Alving in Jose Ruben, a fairly good Engstrand in J. M. Kerrigan, an excellent Regina in Hortense Alden, and a disappointing Mrs. Alving in, Lucile Watson.

The play itself does not seem so taut and reverberate an adventure as it used to. Time and fashion and the crowding experiences of our troubled time have blunted the fangs of many a great but earlier philosophy. Ghosts is a play which the student cannot afford to miss, but it is also a play for which the general mad demand is imperceptibly dwindling.

Clean-minded theatre-goers rejoiced that, although Ghosts was not well performed, yet the audience took with equanimity its moral: That a woman may be wrong to go on living with a libertine even when he is her husband. Manhattanites of 1926 did not howl down Oswald, the venereal-disease-wracked son of Libertine Alving. Though they evinced sympathy for Mrs. Alving in her efforts to shield Oswald from temptation, they appeared to acquiesce with Ibsen in thinking that his attempt to seduce his mother's maid and his eventual blindness were foredoomed. A few uncultured spectators seemed vexed that Libertine Alving did not appear, having died some years before the play was supposed to begin. Ibsenites pointed proudly to this example of the great Hendrick's "retrospective method." They recalled that it was his habit to plunge into the midst of his story and then gradually reveal the long sequence of former events.

Devils. A harsh play of southern superstition slipped into town and caught the professional witnesses off their guard. So many bad plays have been done in this lamentable season that an air of patient resignation has come over the first-nighters. Furthermore Devils was by Daniel N. Rubin, author of the incredible Night Duel, in which the established talents of Marjorie Rambeau were recently sacrificed.

Devils turned out to have depth and determination. It tells of a buried community in the cotton fields and how the Christian religion reached them all awry and drove the prettiest daughter of the village to delirium and death. The instrument of the Word's distortion is a ranting fanatic of a priest, who boils accurately through the play in the interpretation of John Cromwell. The play is brutal and unpleasant, but a sound and at times swiftly exciting piece of dramaturgy. How much of it is truth and how much of it is theatre, only a witness who knows the hidden southern countries can determine.

90 Horse-Power. Out of the many plays this week this must be set down as the least. It is the story of a Long Island chauffeur who was really a person of distinction. The talents of the troupe are inconsiderable.

The Neighborhood Playhouse last week interrupted the run of The Dybbuk with a triple bill of light music. The three are A Burmese Pwe; Hayden's opera-bouffe, The Apothecary; and Kuan Yin, a Chinese fantasy. They combine into one of the most graceful and thoroughly satisfactory entertainments that the town now boasts. The Burmese piece depicts the general good time to be had by all when a wealthy host gives a party. The Apothecary is light and whimsical, and the Chinese piece has bits of Russian and a dash of good old Broadway. Albert Carroll and the resident Neighborhood troupe are employed in the performance and give singularly good account. The entertainment provides probably the only musical evening in the city's theatres devoid of a note of jazz or an old joke.

*John Gabriel Borkman, Little Eyolf, Hedda Gabler, The Master-builder, Rosmersholm, etc.