New Plays in Manhattan

Storm Operation (by Maxwell Anderson; produced by The Playwrights' Company) is Maxwell Anderson at his weakest. A war play, it is about as exciting as cream of wheat. In vain did Anderson visit North Africa (where General Eisenhower supplied him with his title, a code phrase for the invasion). Anderson brought back nothing but some mild local color and some soldier talk that he could have heard at home.

The play, which ambles up-country through several months of the North African campaign, accumulates neither meaning nor suspense. Nor can it hold up as straight reporting, for most of it is purpled by the storybook struggle between a U.S. top sergeant (Myron McCormick) and a titled British captain (Bramwell Fletcher) over an Australian nurse. The captain is out of a Punch cartoon, the girl just out of this world. In the end, while Stukas blaze overhead, the proud peer gamely reads the marriage service over the girl and the better man.

Suds in Your Eye (adapted by Jack Kirkland from Mary Lasswell's novel; produced by Katherine Brown and J. H. Del Bondio) chronicles the capers of three beer-befuddled old girls in a San Diego junk yard. Mistress of the junk pile is a tough-but-tender Irish widow (Jane Darwell). Her guests are a lorgnetted, half-tetched old maid (Brenda Forbes) and a you-lead-I'll-follow neighbor woman. Light of heart and low in funds, the three of them racket about, play Cupid, take up Spanish, wrangle with the tax collector.

These raffish antics lead to some funny moments but a flimsy evening. Playwright Kirkland's low-lifers are not rich and genuine creations who need only exist to amuse; they are hell-raisers who can score only in action. Since Suds boasts no plot, the gals keep weaving in circles, as much from author-trouble as from beer.

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