New Play in Manhattan

The Wonder Bar is a Viennese importation using the modern (and ancient) device of making the whole theatre the stage. It is notable solely for the fact that it brings Singer Asa Yoelson (Al Jolson) back to the legitimate stage after an absence of five years. The Nora Bayes Theatre is transformed into a huge cafe. Swarms of waiters, chasseurs, patrons, pages, barmen, gigolos and handsome poules de luxe make their entrances through the aisles, and the proprietor, Al Jolson, works hard to pull the production together by circulating through the audience, greeting startled latecomers, insisting that there is "never a dull moment in Al's little Wonder Bar." This might be true if The Wonder Bar were really a night box where one could attend the entertainment and at the same time, eat, drink, rigadoon and speak freely with friends. But such is not the case.

Unhappily, the novelty of the setting soon wears off and Mr. Jolson, omitting his traditional blackface and wearing eve ning clothes throughout the show (which is a weak to-do about a woman who leaves her husband, but later returns to him), wastes a lot of his genuine talent on several pitiably bad songs. He cracks appallingly stale jokes--among them, the one about the girl who resents having her beauty compared to an old Rembrandt. In Act II, however, Comedienne Patsy Kelly capers through some coarse monkeyshines. Mr. Jolson sings a Yiddish folk song which is eminently successful and which anyone can understand, two spry and clever Negro dancers named Carol Chilton and Maceo Thomas appear. First night spectators, seeing Mr. Jolson's pretty wife Ruby Keeler in their midst, wished that she too would get up on the stage and help out the show with some of the tap-dancing she used to do when she was one of the Little Girls at Texas Guinan's.

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