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Congai. Civilization wins in this play.

That means that French officers and soldiers will continue suavely to educate Indo-China, using the maxim that the congai is more pleasant than the sword. Congai means something just above a prostitute, one is led to believe, a native "wife" taken by a French colonist for a period of time subject to change without notice. Every bellylaugh in the play is an attempt to explain these meanings; but, of course, grown-up children like to be told all about such things, while off-stage instruments go thumpety-thumpety-thump (atmosphere).

And yet Congai is reputed to contain a tragic significance. A half-French-half-native girl (Helen Menken) would rather be alone in the jungle with her native lover and their native child than have 100,000 Frenchmen at her feet. Circumstances, however, again and again prevent the fulfillment of her life wish and she ends up as the best congai of Indo-China--the congai of the French governor.

Helen Menken's performance is far below that of her Seventh Heaven. The staging by Rouben Mamoulian is not as convincing as his Porgy.

Peter Pan. Such is the intense seriousness of the Civic Repertory Theatre that it resembles the U. S. Cabinet; and Calvin Coolidge, to those who have seen him in leggins, seems a more appropriate impersonator of Peter Pan than Eva Le Gallienne. It was not therefore surprising to find that, as produced by the Civic Repertory Theatre, Peter Pan was a little studied and that Eva Le Gallienne seemed cool-headed and energetic rather than cumbersomely elfin in the name part.

Holiday. Among the most nostalgic of musical instruments are those tinkling boxes which the members of the present generation heard in their nurseries and can never hear again without experiencing some intense and hungry emotion. By causing one of these primitive gramophones to bray gently from deep stage, Author Philip Barry suddenly twists the mood of Holiday from one of gaiety to one of longing.

Philip Barry wrote Paris Bound, a light cocktail of adultery and wit; like that fine play, Holiday begins frivolously. The situation: a girl, Julia Seton, introduces to her glum father, her charming sister and her drunken brother, the clever, adventurous and successful young man whom she wishes to marry. In the second act there is a party at which the engagement is announced; and Linda, the charming sister, invites friends whom she likes better than the correct friends of her family to a private party of her own which she arranges, with bottles of whiskey, in what used to be the nursery. Here two fantastically funny friends of hers invent flowering amusements; then the music box plays and Linda dances with Johnny Case, her sister's fiance.

Later Johnny Case explains to Julia

Seton, in terms which she is unable to understand, that life for him must be a holiday, that he does not want to grab for money. Only Linda shares his lazy, glamorous ambitions. In the last act, of course, it is Linda with whom Johnny Case prepares to go to Europe.

A point of view was expressed by that now completely discredited author, Michael Arlen, when he invented the title, These Charming People. That title explains all that there is to like about Holiday; the people are almost real and the ones who should be are completely charming. So are the actors who make them real: with her stoop-shouldered, puzzled aspect, Hope Williams as Linda; and Donald Ogden Stewart, who wrote A Parody Outline of History and has previously acted in charades, as one of the participants in Linda's party. He makes a speech there, and his listeners become the guests at a business banquet. He tells them how, after coming to this country when three weeks old, with nothing in his pockets except a nickel and an old hatcheck, he became a success in the glass industry owing to his invention of the bottle.

It is the special ability of certain comediennes to convince their audiences that they are as charming off the stage as they are upon it. Hope Williams has been able to do this after having been born at Mamaroneck, New York and into the Social Register, to be reared in an atmosphere of finishing schools and coming-out parties. Indeed, before Philip Barry asked her to play in Paris Bound she had acted only in plays of the amateur comedy club, junior league and "Snarks," an organization of female amateurs, who invite male guests to play in their productions. Now, too, she rides to the theatre in a Rolls Royce that might belong to almost any one; also strangely enough at the dude-ranch near

Cody, Wyoming, which she and her brother own, she rides large, obstreperous horses.

A Most Immoral Lady. Alice Brady has not had a good show since Bride of the Lamb and that was not a box-office smash. Therefore her admirers hoped that Townsend Martin's first play might prove to be other than what it was--a good-natured description of a familiar but not fertile situation. A lady who is really not immoral accidentally puts the man she loves in a most embarrassing position--in which position his wife discovers him. A Parisian cafe is the background for the third act in which the lady's gloom turns into joy. Alice Brady, especially by means of a tete-a-tete with a telephone, is able to make the play presentable and no one could do more.

The Perfect Alibi. There have been times when Alan Alexander Milne appeared to have forgotten his own identity and to have confused himself with one or other of the animals in his books for children. In The Perfect Alibi, he emerges with clever grins from behind a whimsy, offering to playgoers an icy excuse for all his innocent absurdities. So devious an author as A. A. Milne would not present so malleable a diversion as a murder play, without giving it a twist of his own. Thus the audience sees two thugs kill an old English gentleman and then watches two young people, a boy and a girl (Vivian Tobin), attempt to get the right answer to the mystery of his demise.

The old man is a judge; his murderers are men whom he once sentenced to death. They have escaped and come back long afterward, so changed that the unsuspecting judge invites them to a house party. The girl is Vivian Tobin; the most frightening scene in the play occurs when she and her fiance make up their minds that the old man did not commit suicide, that some one must have murdered him.

The Lady Lies. To make a play exciting, there is the principle of the tug-of-war. Author John Meehan presents a hero who is a prosperous lawyer. The lawyer is a widower; he has a mistress, three children and the intention of marrying a young lady from the Social Register.

The fiancee amounts to nothing. The children and the mistress fight with each other for the lawyer. Why the children are not spanked by their father and told to stay at home is not explained. Instead they invade the mistress' apartment or ask her in ill-bred fashion to visit theirs. Somehow, Author Meehan makes their bad behavior seem excusable so that the audience hopes that both mistress and children will get the lawyer. Owing to the skilled advices of a friend of the mistress, both do. William Boyd, once Quirt in What Price Glory, is the bone of contention.

The Age of Innocence. Here is Edith Wharton's story of the Countess Olenska, eloquently transferred to the stage by Margaret Ayer Barnes. The Countess Olenska returned to Manhattan, leaving her horrible Count in Europe. In Manhattan she met Newland Archer; they fell in love, but Newland married a girl to whom he was engaged. Newland Archer and the Countess nearly ran away together when the horrible Count crossed the ocean to retrieve her; but Newland's wife was too feeble for the Countess, who was sick of cruelties, to injure; so Countess Olenska returned to her Count and Newland Archer stayed with his wife.

Audiences have now become accustomed to copulation in the theatre and they may wonder how it is that a brief kiss almost causes Newland Archer to leave Mrs. Newland Archer for the Countess Olenska. Today, a playwright would not have used the kiss; but by substituting more ardent gestures he would not have made the situation more compelling. The time of the piece is "the seventies." The troubles of the characters in it are not rendered artificial by the artificialities of its expression, and the graces of a graceful era are retained. Watching the passion and despair of these costumed people, you smile at first and then realize suddenly that though they look strange their feelings are familiar.

Katharine Cornell is Countess Olenska; swinging her skirts and thrusting her neck forward, she interprets the part according to the grand manner. The most sad, true and unusual scene in the play is made by Arnold Korff. As Julius Beaufort, he launches into a declaration of love for the Countess Olenska, couched in German accents and florid with metaphor, which is the more tragic because it is so nearly ridiculous.

Peter C. Cornell, the manager of the Majestic Theatre in Buffalo, is the father of Katharine Cornell. When Jessie Bonstelle, now the mentor of Detroit's Civic Theatre, arrived in Buffalo, Katharine Cornell became her pupil and like many another of Jessie Bonstelle's proteges, profited greatly by the tutelage. Later she toured under William A. Brady; later still she made her debut in London, returned to Manhattan for a series of successes of which the most notable was The Green Hat, and married Guthrie McClintic. Last year she was in The Letter; last week she received rave notices, from even St. John Ervine of the New York World.