Theatrical check list

George Jean Nathan

• WITHIN THE GATES (Sean O'Casey)—A poetic scrutiny of the hypocrisies of our world and one of the most radiant plays in modern dramatic literature. It comes to a stage that has bad need of such beauty; let us hope that a public which regards Merrily We Roll Along and Small Miracle as examples of sterling dramatic art will not spell its theatrical doom. A thoroughly competent acting troupe is on tap.

• A SLEEPING CLERGYMAN (James Bridie)—Speaking of dramatic art, this is the sort of stuff that the Theatre Guild periodically mistakes for it. All we find is a lot of commonplace melodrama professorially embroidered with a theory about hereditary influences, said theory long having been the common property of all schoolboys over fourteen years of age. Some of the acting is hardly to be mentioned in polite society.

• SPRING SONG (B. and S. Spewack)— Mr. Max Gordon doubtless won this manuscript in a strip poker game. One can't account for his production of it in any other way. Several of the acting performances are also evidently I.O.U.'s.

• ORDER PLEASE{Edward Childs Carpenter)—Mystery storehouse fodder.

• DIVIDED BY THREE{Margaret Leech and Beatrice Kaufman)—Try again, girls. This one might have got by twenty or thirty years ago, but, as your grandmothers will tell you, the theatre has changed a lot since then.

• DREAM CHILD (J. C. Nugent)—The hitherto chaste Mr. Nugent this time goes hotsy-totsy with a little sex and proves himself just a little duller than heretofore.

• LOST HORIZONS{Harry Segall)—Emanating from a Hollywood brain and bought prior to its production as a play by one of the Hollywood companies, it offers nothing to the dramatic critic. Jane Wyatt acquits herself well—and wastes her time—on the leading role which, when it returns to Hollywood, will in all probability be cast with Wallace Beery.

• PERSONAL APPEARANCE{Lawrence Riley)—Mr. Brock Pemberton has been searching for three years, he says, for a play worthy of production by him. In that time there have been available plays by Pirandello, Shaw, Maugham, O'Casey, et al. He has now at length proudly selected a wisecracking box-office manuscript dealing with a movie actress' sexual tour among her fans.

• HIPPER'S HOLIDAY{John Crump)—A product of the summer theatre circuit and fully up to the dud standard of the drama one gets on the summer theatre circuit.

• JUDGMENT DAY{Elmer Rice)—Fannie Hurst, the world's champion endorser of bad plays, proclaims that it is pretty swell stuff. That's all you need to know about it.

• A SHIP COMES IN{Joseph Anthony)—John Erskine, runner-up, proclaims this one another gem. Ditto.

• THE FIRST LEGION{Emmet Lavery)—A drama of the Society of Jesus.

• LIFE BEGINS AT 8:40—A gay and stimulating revue and an enjoyable evening in the theatre—and if you think that it is funny for a critic to roast nine-tenths of the dramatic offerings on the current stage and then boost a mere song and dance show, just you go around and take a look at those aforesaid dramatic offerings.

• SMALL MIRACLE{Norman Krasna)—When I awoke the morning after the opening and read the ecstatic reviews of this one, I concluded that I must have been in the wrong theatre the night before. Surely the play I saw there wasn't the one the reviewers could have seen.

• MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (C. S.Kaufman and Moss Hart) — Read it in the now published book form and you'll discern at once and clearly how the reviewers confounded adroit staging and smooth acting with reputable drama.

• THE DISTAFF SIDE{John Van Druten)—Sybil Thorndike takes an inferior comedy by the often pat Mr. Van Druten and makes it seem somewhat better than it is, even though Miss Estelle Winwood, Miss Mildred Natwick and several other performers periodically get in her way.

• THE GREAT WALTZ—The Boulder Dam of musical shows, costing a fortune to construct, out of which trickle merely a few lovely Strauss waltzes. It might have been built much more effectively for a few thousand dollars.