New Plays in Manhattan

The Roof. The English theatre can be as sentimental as it can be grim. In this play, sentimental John Galsworthy, assisted by sentimental Producer Charles Hopkins, has demonstrated an overwhelming faith in mankind. It is a play, or rather the rough draft of a play, about four sets of British folk in a small Paris hotel. In one room are three men and a 1 boy come to Paris--Berris to them, as they are actually British--for a lark. In another are two lovers, enjoying the prelude to what promises to be a grand passion. A porky gentleman and his porky wife argue good-naturedly in still another. The last group consists of a dying novelist, his wife and two charming children. At the close of Act I a fire is started by one of the merrymakers. Playwright Galsworthy then sets out to show the very brave, very British way in which his characters meet this calamity.

To the children it is exciting fun. To the revelers it is an opportunity to repeat all the nice things Rudyard Kipling has been saying during the past 25 years about British Pluck. To the lovers it means discovery and ruin. To the porky pair, the male member of which shuffles about in that funniest of theatrical garments, the nightshirt, it is just the sort of nuisance one would expect the French to brew. To the novelist it is death.

So far, quite good. But from this point on Playwright Galsworthy runs into third-act trouble. Unable to attain the brilliant crescendo of a Grand Hotel, Playwright Galsworthy gets all his characters to the roof of the hostelry--where they again show how civilized folk face a crisis--and finally permits all save the foolish incendiarist to be rescued by belated pompiers.

Moving through all this is one remarkable character, a waiter (Edouard La Roche) who is a cross between the Admirable Crichton and a Christian saint. To all emergencies he responds with almost divine calm and good sense, never forgetting his hospitality. As the flames lick up over the roof's parapet he is still offering to bring blankets, wine, hope, dernier confort.

East Wind. Sigmund Romberg (Nina Rosa, The New Moon) is the lushest musician working for the musical comedy stage. His melodies, usually boomed by a great big band, come out thick as fudge. For East Wind Composer Romberg has done his fudgiest. Pleasing result: a martial number called "East Wind," a stomp-time ballad named "You Are My Woman" and a lament "I'd Be A Fool."

This year the Romberg romance has been laid in French Indo-China by Librettists Oscar Hammerstein II and Frank Mandel. In this comparatively virgin territory a young woman (Charlotte Lansing) weds a young man (William Williams) although his upstanding brother (J. Harold Murray) is also in love with her. Unfortunately, Actor Williams succumbs to the swimming hips of a dancing girl (Ahi). The musical journey leads to Paris, where Actress Lansing goes from good to bad, then to Marseilles, where she goes from bad to worse. Honest Actor Murray, of course, finally finds, redeems her.

East Wind's velocity is exceedingly low except for the sporadic appearance of a funnyman named Joe Penner. Mr. Penner bounces around, ogles like a monstrous, puckish infant. He sells a bleached elephant to some unsuspecting Indo-Chinese, is thereafter terrorized by the victims of his chicane.

In 1923 Joe Penner labored in the Ford plant at Detroit. Hard times threw him out of work so he began trouping with burlesque shows. He appeared for the first time on a legitimate Broadway stage last year in the short-lived Vanderbilt Review. Like most oldtime burlesquers (such as W. C. Fields, Bobby Clark, Joe Cook) he uses an ably manipulated cigar as his chief prop.

Cynara. Barrister James Warlock (Philip Merivale) is as decent, honorable a chap as you would find in a day's riding. His wife (Phoebe Foster) is a comely, gentle woman. Yet circumstances so arrange it that when Mrs. Warlock goes away from London for four weeks, Barrister Warlock meets Doris (Adrianne Allen), a little shopgirl. Barrister Warlock is faithful to his departed wife after his fashion. A kind man and a sensitive one, he cannot help responding to Doris' love. Being a man, he does not understand that Doris' promise to break off when Mrs. Warlock returns is the promise of a woman in love, is therefore writ in sand. Mrs. Warlock returns. Jilted Doris commits suicide. Barrister & Mrs. Warlock exile themselves in Capri, finally adjust themselves to conditions whose genesis was beyond their control. Cynara, which contains few dramatic surprises, finds Actor Merivale (The Road to Rome, Death Takes a Holiday) at his usual stoic best, finds two sympathetic interpreters in Actresses Foster & Allen. To say that Cynara is the best Shubert show so far this season is to damn it with faint praise. It is several cuts above that.

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