New Plays in Manhattan

She's My Baby. Beatrice Lillie is reliably considered the funniest woman on the stage; although there is many a funny woman on the stage--and off it. Miss Lillie* gained reputation several years ago when she suddenly burst upon a placid metropolis in Chariot's Revue. She sang serious patriotic songs in a gravely irreverent manner. She did many unusual things with her eyes, voice, hands and strange, straight face which sometimes re minds one of Buster Keaton at his best. She played another Chariot show, and ever since some one has been trying to star her in a musical show all her own. Again the attempt is incomplete. It is every body's fault but Miss Lillie's. It is chiefly the fault of the men who wrote the jokes. Too often they are not jokes at all but matter like "I'm not a menial, if you get what I menial." There are inevitably excellent Tiller girls and a scattering of capable supporters and a plot about a man who had to pretend he was husband and father to inherit wealthy grandfather's gold. Nearly everyone agreed that Miss Lillie's surroundings are superfluous. Yet when she is in view contentment spreads ; especially when she upsets the dinner service and makes her exit wrapped nobly in the tablecloth.

Peripherie. From their tumultuous spectacles (Midsummer Night's Dream, Jedermann, Danton's Tod), Producer Max Reinhardt and company turned last week to the quieter drama of speculation. Peripherie, which has been translated as "The Ragged Edge," treats murder in somewhat the same vein of comic realism as does the U. S. tabloid press. What digs the vein deeper than it is ever dug by dramatic U. S. journalism or journalistic U. S. drama, is a thrust of reason which Europeans do not fear to exert in their most fantastic moods. Franzi, the roustabout hero of Peripherie, murders a wealthy patron of his harlot sweetheart. He successfully disposes of the corpse but is hounded by his conscience into confessions, which none will believe. Theatre-goers to whom spoken German conveys no meaning may miss the specific but not the general philosophizing. A thumb, a hip, an eyebrow, drilled by Reinhardt, can beggar the average theatre-goer's aural vocabulary.

Red Dust. A big rubber man of Indo-China was pinned under the playwright's microscope and allowed to squirm heroically into the blessed state of matrimony. Scourges of the tropics--heat, drought, insects, dust--add to his squirms. He passes an uncomfortable and highly monosyllabic evening. He is the strong & silent type of rubber man.

In pursuit of him are two none too desirable females. One is French, correct, cold, a poor mixer. The other has red hair and a reputation tinged to match. She saves her hero's life in time to get the curtain down on an inordinately leaden evening.

Marco Millions. The Theatre Guild cut the laces of their money bags and spread a season's profits on a lavish gesture for our first native playwright, Eugene O'Neill. His impolite conception of that fabled traveler Marco Polo has been written for some years. No producer had heretofore been found with cash enough to risk it on the long, laborious beauties of an Oriental comedy. It is to the glory of the Guild that they will take such losses for things they think worth while; the wonder of it is that such idealism can be mixed with the shrewd commercial sense by which the Guild makes fortunes on other plays to spread for their artistic luxuries.

O'Neill has brought Marco Polo back to life as a Babbitt. He shows him first as a young, silly lad in bright blue tights writing bad verses to a mental lady love. Later in gay Cathay he grows up to govern provinces, grind them down with efficiency taxation programs, win senseless popular recognition with the familiar cant of modern politics. A princess, granddaughter of the great Kublai Kaan, falls frantically in love with him. His stupid commercial soul sees her only as a figurehead, an opportunity to do his duty to the monarch.

Against the thickheaded blustering of Marco, Playwright O'Neill has cast the strange magic of his poetry. Beautiful lines and the deep music of philosophy glow in the duller context of the play. Sluggish patches slow up the evening; eleven scenes destroy a concentration of interest. Stunningly beautiful scenery by Lee Simonson seduced the eye; as did the beauty of Margalo Giilmore playing ably as the Princess. Alfred Lunt, usually excellent leader of the Guild troupe, was below his best as Marco.

The Prisoner. Siberian prison life before the Russian Revolution is not a subject for weary stockbroker. For he will see, through three long acts, a captive, wearier far than he will ever be, struggling, white faced, before a loutish warden. Death is at the end. Despite propaganda and repetitions the play has well acted stretches of power, beauty.

*Off stage Miss Lillie is Lady Peel, wife of Sir Robert Peel, Bart., descendant of the famed Sir Robert.