New Plays in Manhattan

The Mermaids Singing (by John van Druten; produced by Alfred de Liagre Jr.) puts a pleasant little bauble in a very large box and fills in all the open spaces with tissue paper. The result, as always with an overwrapped gift, is disappointing.

In his new play, the author of The Voice of the Turtle is concerned with the oft-told, always tellable story of the middle-aged celebrity and the infatuated young girl. This time the man, who has made a Broadway reputation by writing sexy plays, is married; the girl, a restless young thing in "any large American city," is engaged. There is no overpowering amorous feeling on either side. She reaches out romantically toward glamor and sophistication. He rather ruefully responds to her because she symbolizes youth.

Their rather thin love makes a rather thin love story. The girl (well-played by attractive Beatrice Pearson) is understandable and fairly real; but the man (well enough played by Walter Abel) is not convincing. Nor has Playwright van Druten sufficiently concentrated on The Mermaids Singing as a romantic duet. He has thrown in a mixed choir of nonfunctional minor characters who spoil the play's tone and slacken its tempo.

For two acts The Mermaids Singing has enough amusing lines and situations. But the third act, banishing laughter as well as love, runs downhill all the way, with very flat country at the bottom.

Strange Fruit (adapted from Lillian Smith's novel by the author, with the assistance of Esther Smith; produced by Jose Ferrer), on the stage, as in book form, pulls no sociological punches. But the play lacks dramatic punch. A fledgling Broadway playwright, Lillian Smith too often wobbles in her storytelling, too often fails to pick up the dramatic scent. An unconverted novelist, she has gamely but unwisely tried to transfer to the stage the whole life of a Georgia town. The result is far less spacious than sprawling.

The well-known story of Strange Fruit is, to be sure, a steadily enlarging one. The star-crossed love of white Tracy Deen (Melchor Ferrer) and Negro Nonnie Anderson (Jane White) widens out beyond personal tragedy into social tragedy. The rooted Southern prejudices, the rankling inequalities, the violence that leads Nonnie's brother to murder Tracy, the feeling that leads a mob to lynch an innocent Negro for the crime--all these are like pieces in a sociological puzzle.

As mere pieces a few of them are vivid, even explosive. But with its dozen scenes and three dozen characters, Strange Fruit is jumpy, congested, disordered. As theater, it has far too little excitement; as drama, far too little thrust.

Though fully aware of her theatrical inexperience, Novelist Lillian Smith decided to dramatize Strange Fruit herself for fear that an "outside dramatist" would misrepresent the book. Says she: "I knew it would have been easy to make a racial Romeo and Juliet out of it ... I wanted a panoramic picture of human beings--white and colored--trapped by the whole mechanism of segregation. I broke a great many rules but I knew what rules I was breaking . . . I'm proud of it ... I wouldn't change a word."

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