New Plays in Manhattan

The Little Show. Like an animated issue of such smart charts as Vanity Fair and The New Yorker is this revue, gathered by clever Manhattanites from the fancies, satires, slap-sticks of their native city. Merry, squint-eyed Fred Allen, whose voice sounds as though it ran over a ratchet, is chief wisecracker. Elongated Clifton Webb does a variety of turns, from elegant ballroom maneuvers to a parody of the John Erskine school of historical fiction. At one point, dressed as a Carthaginian warrior, he keeps languidly remarking: "Oh nuts!" It was in the best interests of mirth to revive George S. Kaufman's skit in which two blase hotel guests discover that the house is on fire. Instead of leaving, they stay to entertain the firemen. As the flames curl outside the windows, one of the firemen telephones the office for the key to the next room. The other tunes a violin, giving the excuse: "Not enough time to practice at home." Libby Holman, that singing girl who improves so tremendously on Helen Morgan, has a full-throated Harlem sonata, "Moanin' Low." Most of the lyrics were written by nimble-witted Howard Dietz, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's publicity man. His "theme" song: Hammacher-Schlemmer* (I Love You). The Grand Street Follies have always depended largely on protean Albert Carroll, impish imitator of the grimaces and posturings of famed actresses. In this latest edition -a mockery fest which simultaneously jibes at world history, actors, producers, Broadway hits -Mimic Carroll simulates the jiggling gait of Beatrice Lillie (This Year of Grace), the lush, salivary speech of Constance Collier (the countess in Serena Blandish), the Jewish idiom of Fannie Brice (Fioretta), the long-legged, weaving rhythms of Gertrude Lawrence (Treasure Girl). He is far less successful in his one attempt to imitate a man, to catch the elusive implications of silent Harpo Marx (Animal Crackers). There are also two female mimics: Dorothy Sands and Paula Trueman. The latter sings a Mid-Victorian love lyric while stripping herself of illusion's oldtime harness -bustle, gussets, padded bosom. Congratulations pokes a rather feeble finger at country politics. Morgan Wallace (the name of both playwright and hero) is a stock company entrepreneur and leading man who, broke, is persuaded by a smalltown boss in Missouri to run as dummy candidate for Mayor. So potent has been his appeal over the footlights that he gets all the women's vote, is elected. Backstage scenes of the type resorted to here are no longer convulsive for their own sake. Nor does pleasant hokum like the sale of candy with a souvenir in each & every box, redeem the longer intervals of sluggish comedy. Henry Hull makes the actor-mayor only a conventional juvenile. The Passion Play, traditional drama of Christ's last days, has been given for more than six centuries on the hills of Freiburg, Germany.* Last week the Freiburg players appeared in Manhattan, presented by Morris Gest, directed by David Belasco. The locale was the gigantic Hippodrome, onetime scene of elephantine musical shows in which Annette Kellerman swam, Charlotte skated, Nat Wills buffooned. To see the story of the benign, miraculous Nazarene went a strange audience, women whose faces were chalky with rouge, men with creaking collars and glistening hats. Sensitive Manhattan Jews flayed Producer Gest, some for staging the story, for which Jews have been reviled through the centuries (see p. 44), some for cramping into commercial dimensions a grave, long-drawn folk epic. The Palm. Sunday entry into Jerusalem. was a complex, splendid orchestration of crowds flowing in great whorls toward and about the temple portals, looking ever backward to the approaching figure of the Christus. For the Last Supper, Leonardo's faded painting was lavishly restored in living shapes. On Calvary the greensward was cool, terribly oblivious of the burdened crosses. Solemnities of tone from orchestra, organ and choir sounded through the entire pageant. In the street outside a fire siren wailed. For more than a century and a half the Fassnacht family has dominated the Freiburg Passion Play, passing its privilege to its heirs. In Manhattan six Fassnachts appeared. Georg was a tragically mercurial Judas. Georg Jr. was Johannes. Amalie, Elsa and Augusta were respectively Mary, Mary Magdalene, the Blind Woman. Adolf, the eldest, gave to the Christus a grave presence, a tenor voice of such reedy purity and pliability that the German tongue seemed, in his mouth, no longer one of the world's least lovely languages.

*-Famed Manhattan hardware store.

* More famed, not so ancient, is the Passion Play presented at ten-year intervals by the inhabitants of Oberammergau, Germany. This version began in 16.33.