New Play in Manhattan

Jig Saw (by Dawn Powell; Theatre Guild, producer) is a glib little pastiche which ends the Theatre Guild's 16th season, brings minuscule Ernest Truex and fluttery Spring Byington into the organization for the first time. Miss Powell is better known for her novels (She Walks in Beauty) than for her dramatic works (Big Night). And she is pitiably outclassed when compared to such Guild comic artists as S. N. Behrman, Ferenc Molnar and George Bernard Shaw. Although Jig Saw is utterly without significance and woefully short on plot, it abounds in witty if ungermane lines.

A pretty but maturing blonde (Miss Byington, last seen in When Ladies Meet) has for 15 years been kept with quiet dignity by a small and practical Baltimorean (Mr. Truex). Because of her propensity for bestowing her latchkey on attractive strangers ("It's so hard to know what to give a man"), the lady snares dissolute Nathan Gifford (Eliot Cabot). Unhappily, the lady's daughter, fresh from a French convent, decides to get Mr. Gifford for herself. She does. Her mother seeks temporary solace in the familiar arms of her longtime protector.

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