New Plays in Manhattan

Martine. A country girl who fell in love with a casual journalist and who married a yokel she didn't like when the journalist turned his attention to a brighter flame--that is what this quiet but very human little French play is about. But there is apparently some consequence of translation and transportation which leaves such plays weak. The American Laboratory Theatre presents this one with a cast that is clever but amateurish.

March Hares. In 1921, this playfully preposterous comedy by Harry Wagstaff Gribble made two appearances on the Manhattan stage. Twice, with strenuous and pathetic spasms, like a fish in the grass, it flopped. There was a fairly unanimous feeling that the play would have lasted longer had it been played with more cunning and dexterity. When it became known that Richard Bird and Vivian Tobin were to appear in a second revival, theatregoers anticipated something that might brighten the last long week in Lent.

To some extent, their anticipations were rewarded. There was Geoffrey Wareham and Janet Rodney, his fiancee, an absurd and temperamental pair, a burden though a source of merriment to the girl's bewildered mother. The situation in this little group became tense with the arrival of Claudia Kitts, friend to Janet, and foolish Edgar Fuller, Geoffrey's visitor. Claudia looked at Geoffrey Wareham with timid but tenacious adoration. Squealing soulful come-ons, she caused a scene to occur wherein Geoffrey slapped Miss Rodney's cheeks. Further complications were engendered when the pasty Mr. Fuller made a pass at Claudia. Not until her hitherto unmentioned husband arrives upon the scene, thereby precipitating one of the most comic lines of contemporary drama, does the demure insanity of March Hares become quieted in a final readjustment.

Though Author Gribble was said to have supervised the direction of the present production, many faults could be found in the manner of its production. The leading members of the cast sometimes flung their lines about with just such misplaced vigor as a hammer thrower might use in hurling a toy balloon; they reached for comedy like a first baseman trying to catch a butterfly. Josephine Hull played Mrs. Rodney with great cunning, while Dorothy Stickney, who was a mad murderess in Chicago, brought down cheers for making Claudia Kitts as raucous as a finger nail dragged across a blackboard.