New Plays in Manhattan

Keep It Clean. It has become customary in revues to have a comedian wittily announce the scenes in advance. If he predicts that they will be stupid, the audience may laugh. But if they are stupid, the audience not only will not laugh, but will think ugly things about the comedian. Such is Impresario Will Morrissey's plight in Keep It Clean. He suggests merrily that he will be unable to pay his cast and creditors. When his 'buffoons and minstrels have taken their dull turns, the audience is inclined to agree with him. Apart from a spry group of Russel Markert dancers and a burlesque called the Russian Chloral Society, the events are reminiscent of a bad afternoon at Keith's. Jimmy Carr's expert dance band is in the pit, but unfortunately it renders one of those painful "collegiate" satire songs which is the revenge of saxophone players who could not get into college.

Bomboola. Out of the inexhaustible deeps of Harlem came this musical comedy, less percussive than last fortnight's amazing Hot Chocolates, tending more toward Negro moods of grace and .pathos. High spot: a party scene in which the dancing couples move their feet least of all and become revivalists at the entrance of the police.

Contest

Writers with plays long or short, light or heavy, stowed away in the backs of their desks or minds, attended announcement last week of the third annual nationwide play contest, sponsored by the Drama League of America and Longmans, Green & Co., Manhattan publishers.

Awards will be made for the best plays of the following types: 1) full length play, either original or adapted from a U. S. story; 2) one-act play suitable for Christmas presentation, not necessarily Biblical; 3) full length, non-sectarian religious play or pageant, not necessarily Biblical. Complete freedom as to subject and style is permitted within these limits. Plays must be submitted before Jan. 1, 1930--full length and one-act plays to state centres, religious plays to the Contest Chairman.*

The winning full-length play, if it meets production requirements, will be staged by the New York Theatre Guild, with $500 advance royalties and rising percentage of gross receipts (reaching 10% on all over $7,000), as well as 50% from the sale of all other professional acting rights.

The Christmas play will be given a try-out production by the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the religious play an amateur try-out by the Pilgrim Players of Evanston, Ill.

Full-length play judges are Playwrights Hatcher Hughes (Hell Bent for Heaven), Kenyon Nicholson (The Barker), and Director Alexander Dean of the New York Theatre Guild.

The Contest Chairman is short, plump, energetic Mrs. A. Starr Best, wife of the owner of a juvenile smartmart in Chicago. For 15 years she has dominated the Drama League of America, which she founded with aid from people like James O'Donnell Bennett, onetime dramacritic and war correspondent of the Chicago Tribune.

In her lakeside home, with two daughters away at college, she now has more time than ever to think and talk drama. The League has branches in every state, England, the Orient. Starting as an organization to propagandize the best plays, it now instigates elaborate home study courses, contests, European drama tours, publications, radio programs, little theatres. Much of its dominion is feminine, through contact with U. S. women's clubs.

*Complete contest details may be obtained from the Play Department, Longmans, Green & Co., 55 Fifth Ave., New York, or the Drama Contest Chairman, 828 Michigan Ave., Wilmetto, Ill.