New Plays in Manhattan

For Love or Money (by F. Hugh Herbert; produced by Barnard Straus) was kept from becoming a minor Broadway debacle through a Broadway debut. Day after the opening of this knickknack by the author of Kiss and Tell, a shower of glittering adjectives ("captivating," "enchanting," "beguiling") descended on gay, winsome, 22-year-old blonde Ingenue June Lockhart (daughter of stage & screen's Gene and Kathleen Lockhart). Already nicely launched in Hollywood (All This and Heaven Too, Meet Me in St. Louis'), June is pretty certainly Broadway's young thing of the year.

The comedy she brightens has her seeking shelter, during a thunderstorm, in the country house of a famous, something-over-40 actor (John Loder). It has her staying on, as his secretary, after the sun comes out; and it poses the problem--an old one for broadish comedy--of how long an attractive and attracted man and girl can live together without living together. Before uniting them legally at the final curtain, Playwright Herbert keeps them apart a bit lewdly for almost three acts. He manages to squeeze a few amusing moments out of their immaculate proximity by shamelessly tossing in anything, apt or alien, that comes to mind.

This Time Tomorrow (by Jan de Hartog; produced by the Theatre Guild) is as solemn as a church organ and as hollow as a drum. A young scientist working on cancer research falls in love with a young girl dying of tuberculosis. Indeed, the X rays proclaim that she should already be dead; what is keeping her alive is a passionate desire to reproduce. She is additionally remarkable for having learned the nature of death, and for having visions that foretell the future:

The young scientist's elderly boss understandably feels that so exceptional a girl should, at all costs, be segregated and studied in the interest of science. The young man himself is torn between science and sex. When he finally kisses the girl, he apparently satisfies the urge that has kept her alive, and she promptly dies.

As realism, This Time Tomorrow is almost void of sense; as symbolism, it is by no means rich in suggestion. All cluttered up with blackouts, electrical storms, laboratory rats, hypnotic trances, scientific jargon and mystical plumage, it may, and then again may not, be deep; but there is no doubt whatever that it is dull.

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