New Play in Manhattan

The Hasty Heart (by John Patrick; produced by Howard Lindsay and Russel Grouse) adds up--or rather, whittles down --to a very interesting evening. In sterner and more skillful hands, this tale of the thawing out of a man who locked the bitter herbs of loneliness in the ice of pride could have been an impressive play.

Brought into a convalescent ward behind the Assam-Burma front, a surly, arrogant young Scots sergeant named Lachlen (Richard Basehart) does not know he has only a few weeks to live. His ward mates and the ward nurse (Anne Burr) do, and they put up with his rudeness and rebuffs until they win him over. But when Lachlen discovers that he is doomed, he decides that all this friendliness was merely pity, and with proud fury he again rejects his fellowmen.

Ending there, with Lachlen the victim of life's blundering blows and his own prickly nature, The Hasty Heart would have ended movingly. Instead it ends sentimentally, with Lachlen thawing out all over again. But the play really clips its own wings much earlier, by making Lachlen a burlesque Scotsman as well as a burdened mortal, and by putting "touching" scenes above truthful ones.

Luckily, the appeal of the play's theme and setting keeps pace with its errors and artifices. Lachlen's companions--a Yank, a Tommy, an Aussie, a New Zealander--with their unforced talk, their unmilitary longings, their international humor--are likable stage types. They are also, because they never strain to be, pretty convincing soldiers.

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