New Plays in Manhattan

Carry Nation (by Frank McGrath; Theatre Unit, Inc., producer). If tight-faced, quixotic little Carry Nation was not insane, according to the McGrath play which claims to be "substantially true," she was close as a toucher to it. Her father was religiously fanatical, had Carry baptized in ice-cold water at the age of 11. The result of her ducking brought on "intestinal consumption" which plagued her all her life. Carry's mother suffered the delusion that she was Queen Victoria; Carry's only child died in an asylum. Carry's mental inheritance took the form of megalomania. She was incorrigibly bossy, inherently destructive.

Her first husband decided she looked like a pig, drank himself into a toper's grave. Her second husband was a humorous, bumbling fraud who preached a little (Carry used to interrupt his sermons), occasionally printed a newspaper, claimed the "brightest legal mind in Kansas." When bibliomancy revealed to Carry that she must demolish by "hatchetation" the blind tigers of Medicine Lodge, Kiowa, Enterprise; when she was jailed for being a nuisance and refused to return home until she had destroyed the nation's supply of "hell broth," Preacher Nation divorced her. Carry, considering herself "just a bulldog at the feet of Jesus Christ, barkin' and bitin' at what He don't like," carried on, founded a home for widows and orphans of drunkards at Kansas City, became president of the W. C. T. U., stumped the country for "that divine law," national Prohibition. In May, 1910, she was kicked out of a saloon in Waterville, Tenn., had her false teeth knocked out and damaged. Before fainting on the lecture platform that night, game little Carry Nation lisped that she "had set her teeth in the Devil this afternoon." Next year she died, aged 64.

As staged by Blanche Yurka, with Esther Dale in the title role and 13 memorably explicit little settings by Norris Houghton, Carry Nation is an extremely interesting, somewhat wry portrait of a U. S. phenomenon. It reaches no climaxes, appears more like a piece by Herbert Asbury for the American Mercury than a play, but the amateur of Americana should get his money's worth from it.

Dangerous Corner (by John Boynton Priestley; Harry Moses, producer) reminds the spectator of the old joke in which a Southern planter, returning home, is first informed that his dog Towser has died. By a slow process of revelation he subsequently learns that his stables, house and mother-in-law have been burned up, his wife run away with a drummer. Author Priestley's play presents the most complicated plot in town. A loves B who loves C who loves D, who has been found dead. Little by little, each member of the cast is forced to reveal what he or she knows of the death. On the surface, as the curtain rises, the Priestley puzzle-pieces are good companions. They are not when the final curtain rings down. The cast of this extremely talky but interesting tour de force includes Colin Keith-Johnston (the terrier-like Captain Stanhope of Journey's End) and caustic, statuesque Jean Dixon (Once In A Lifetime, June Moon).

Tell Her The Truth (by James Montgomery & Frederic Isham; producer, Tillie Leblang). This is the latest mutation of Nothing But The Truth, a venerable comedy based on the situation of a young man who bets his employer's daughter that he can refrain from lying for 24 hours. Five years ago the piece was musicalized as Yes, Yes, Yvette. The current version comes from London at the risk of Mrs. Leblang, widow of the cut-rate ticket broker. It has some music, no chorus. One tune is called "Hoch, Caroline," a broken-German number strongly reminiscent of "I Love Louisa." Another is called "Sing, Brothers," which also sounds imitative. People who heard the songs on English records months ago and saw the show in its previous forms will not be impressed.

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