New Plays in Manhattan

Another Language (by Rose Frankerr Arthur J. Beckhard, producer) ably presents a frieze of commonplace figures, the Hallam family, against the background of New York's West Side. A shamming old mother has gained complete ascendancy over three of her four sons, the kind of men who never alight from a taxi without grumbling that they "might as well have bought the cab." But one son (Glenn Anders of Hotel Universe and Strange Interlude) is not quite so tractable. This reaction is due to the fact that he married a girl who dabbles in sculpture and wants something more out of life than the mere eating and sleeping" which the Hallams appear to get. Mother Hallam does not approve of this son's wife, her sculpture her tea gown, her furniture which "does not match." But the son's young nephew Jerry (John Beal, a capable juvenile just graduated from Pennsylvania's Mask & Wig Club) does approve. He approves so thoroughly that Actor Anders, on the point of losing his wife through blind maternal allegiance, gets his back up. against the family at last, takes his wife away An-other Language, cast and acted with intelligence, provides adult playgoing.

The Man Who Changed His Name (by Edgar Wallace; Frank Conroy, producer) This tragi-comic study of a pair of guilty consciences is said to have been prolific Playwright Wallace's favorite script chiefly because it is one of his few opera which presents not a single corpse. Not long before the playwright's death his friend Actor-Manager Conroy acquired the producing rights to the play and it is largely due to his nimbly raised eyebrows and innocently malicious innuendoes that The Man Who Changed His Name contains two plausibly amusing acts, the first and second.

Selby Clive (Mr. Conroy), a Canadian mining magnate, has a wife (chirrupy Fay Bainter). whose life has been made so pleasant for her by an adoring husband that boredom has driven her to the brink of indiscretion with a young sop named O' Ryan (Derek Fairman). By chance they learn that Clive changed his name from Selby 20 years before in Canada. By chance they also learn that a man named Selby, 20 years before in Canada, ingeniously did away with his philandering mate and her lover in a series of accidents arising out of circumstances which he had publicly warned them to avoid. He therefore went scot free. When a series of near-accidents begin to happen to them, Mrs. Clive and O'Ryan are certain that her husband has planned their murders The arbor collapses, a pit is mysteriously dug in the garden, the stair rail falls. Actor Conroy's sinister joviality through all this excites a great deal of amused tittering from his audiences, goes far to compensate for but does not prevent the lameness of the farce's conclusion. The hand that flutters to Fay Bainter's sad mouth is the one that bossed the admirable Crichton about last season; the mouth sang Victor Herbert's Dream Girl some years before.

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