New Plays in Manhattan

Peace on Earth (by George Sklar and Albert Maltz; produced by the Theatre Union) is another clumsy propaganda play dedicated to the proposition that capitalism is a shell game. Its authors, Yalemen, take a mild, busy college professor (Robert Keith) as their representative of the Right. They persuade him a little toward the Left, involve him with stevedores striking against War, with Communists, with a radical friend who is murdered by the Interests. Tarred with the Left brush, he is crushed by his onetime comrades of the Right. His college classmates, holding a reunion, dress as cowboys, get drunk, mumble themselves into a rage against "good old Pete.'' They climb in his window, bully his little daughter, argue drunkenly with him. When they propose to take him forcibly to apologize to the college president, he orders them out profanely. One lassoes him. The connotations of the rope and the song. "Hang him to a sour apple tree," suggest a lynching, get them half out the door with their man when the professor's wife appears in the doorway. In shuffling shame they drop their ropes, go mumbling away. When the authors finish with their hero, he is waiting to be hanged for an anti-war murder while the U. S. joins a new European conflict. Manhattan audiences emerged from the theatre to hear hawkers of The Dally Worker (Communist) shouting, "All About to Hell with America," "Full Account of the Revolution."

Blackbirds (by Nat N. Dorfman, Mann Holiner and Lew Leslie; songs by Mann Holiner, Alberta Nichols. Ned Washington, Joseph and Victor Young; produced by Sepia Guild Players Inc.) is the third of Lew Leslie's anthologies of the cabaret talent in Manhattan's Negro Harlem.

Another chorus of quick-legged, milk-chocolate girls swing and stomp, shove and pull. A long succession of skits plays with the facts of life with the unsophistication of a barnyard. The king of tap-dancers, stocky little Bill Robinson, slaps his soles against the floor with classic virtuosity. Plump Edith Wilson, scrawny Kathryn Perry sing ably, gaily. The stage crawls with conventional Negro comedians, making fun of Negroes for white entertainment. Eddie Hunter explains to two friends the Eugene O'Neill plot of what he calls the Emperor Bones. It leads into an Emperor Jones jungle bacchanal, feathered, furred and plumed, gaudy and impressive.

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