New Plays in Manhattan

Quicksand. Theatrically, lawyers get themselves into the most disturbing jams. This lawyer fell in love with the woman whose husband he was defending on the charge of murder, only to find both man and wife members of a harsh crowd of criminals. Eventually he escapes from his dilemma by sending the wife to jail for five years and planning to have the sentence quickly cut down. Such proceedings call for no small amount of insight and ingenuity to make them credible. A good deal has been supplied, but not enough. The play works itself up to a pitch of considerable excitement and then subsides, fizzling feebly. Robert Ames, who sometimes acts in the movies, availed himself ably of the opportunities of the leading part.

Spring 3100 is the telephone number of the Manhattan police headquarters. Accordingly one might reasonably expect a stern diversion dealing with the police department on duty through a bloody evening. But the play, of all things, is a dream fantasy. A pugilist is hit on the chin and the developments of the second act are designed to explain what a pugilist thinks about when he is knocked unconscious. It seems this particular pugilist wanted to be an architect and marry a maid above his station. His distrustful manager suggested that if he persisted in these inflated notions he would land at police headquarters. These disheveled inventions are woven into a play, mad enough to fool most of the spectators for much, of the evening. When the hero took the stage and exterminated virtually the entire troupe with revolver shots it was patent that something was askew. Tangles and untangles, it was fairly good fun.

Hot Pan. The adventurous and inquisitive Provincetown Playhouse tucked darkly away in downtown Manhattan has made another rabid experiment. One Michael Swift, distressed at many phases of U. S. life, particularly at the craze for gold, has collected his complaints in a play. He sets it in the California gold rush days and much of it occurs in a boisterous bar. Gold is discovered under the floor. There is a gold rush. Bright scarlet women circulate suggestively. Men howl for whiskey. There is no pretense at connected story. Mr. Swift is seemingly as much at war with dramatic forms as with this world we live in. Flashes of vivid satire, bits of brutal delight gleamed in his dialog like gold nuggets. The rest was sand and water.

These Modern Women. Males have theories, mainly devastating, regarding daughters, sisters, wives and--yes--mothers. Crystallization of many of these theories now appears in a comedy by Lawrence Langner, an executive of the Theatre Guild. The play has not, to be sure, been offered by the Guild, but it bears indistinguishable evidence of skill born of long association with so apt a group. Neatnesses of action, squibs of wit, and carefully concocted climaxes dress it up to seem an important show. Particular patrons did not consider it such. So many nasty things have been said about modern women that it is hard to find a new way of being mean. Mr. Langner's way is to present an aggressive, speech-making female with an indolently attractive husband. Slightly satiated with each other after nine years of marriage, she proposes they polish up their passions through a weekend, respectively, with an English novelist and an infatuated secretary. The episode concludes with the secretary stealing the husband. Chrystal Herne and Minor Watson work willingly and well to vitalize this intricate menage.

Sunny Days. There is, evidently, little that can be done about Frenchmen. They will have mistresses. They have them everywhere, in tasty apartments, in their own drawing rooms, but mostly in musical comedies. For a good laugh in musical comedy just give the audience a French mistress every time. A musical comedy Frenchman lives in eventful agony; he is married to a wife with a nose for news. Inevitable domestic uproars come and go vividly across the scheme of Sunny Days. Billy B. Van gets uncommonly intoxicated in one engrossing passage and there is more than a smattering of sound song. Dancers, good ones, kick capably. Sunny Days, unless one bewares slavishly of imitations, will do.

The Clutching Claw. It is getting so that an actor can scarcely appear on the stage in the first few moments of a new play without being shot down, knifed, garrotted, or done to death with a handsaw. The homicide warns of a nasty mystery brewing in the wings. There must be a helpless heroine and an incurably efficient hero. This play also has a band of international drug dealers, a spiritualistic seance, and a scene in which one actor is propelled in ghostly fashion out over the heads of the audience. This actor, it may be noted, was the only thing about the play over the head of anyone old enough to smoke. The hero is a newspaperman and the goats are the police investigators suffering from acute cranial numbness. Ralph Morgan strives generously to make a man out of the flawless journalist and there are other able acting samples. The performance of the audience, always of chief importance at a mystery play, may be described as adequate. They yelped, shuddered, and some softer souls even hallooed warnings from the orchestra to the gruesomely imperiled Mr. Morgan. Cynics suggested that these warnings might possibly be on the producer's payroll.