New Play in Manhattan

Glad Tidings (by Edward Mabley; produced by Harald Bromley) is set down in the program as a "romantic comedy." Up on the stage, however, it seems like a sentimental farce--which, if a rarer mixture, is a much less rewarding one. The play tells of a well-known foreign correspondent (Melvyn Douglas) who, on the eve of marrying a magazine heiress (Haila Stoddard), is descended on by a cyclonic actress (Signe Hasso) with whom, 20 years before, he had had an affair. With her are her two grown children, one of whom, he learns, is his.

There is little action thereafter, though much reaction: of the father to fatherhood, of the daughter to finding a father, of the actress' son to not finding one. For kids who have been uneasily laughing off their predicament for years, this is no laughing matter. On the other hand, their mother is the sort of stage type who spells laughter or nothing. Hence something half-real jostles something quite wacky in the sort of situation that won't admit of farce and feeling both. But beyond its muddled tone, Glad Tidings suffers from the author's clumsy, indelicate touch. The rewards, of both writing and acting, are fairly momentary. Though Melvyn Douglas is quietly wry and down-to-earth, Signe Hasso is eruptive enough to make Tallulah Bankhead seem demure.

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