New Plays

The Garrick Gaieties. Manhattan's drowsy acceptance of May inactivity in the theatre was disturbed last week when the young persons of the Theatre Guild revealed their second annual spatter of satire called the Garrick Gaieties. Their activities were as ingratiating as ever, but perhaps not so brilliantly supplied with material as last year.

There were those who said that they were too ingratiating. There was perhaps a feeling that the players were too flagrantly depending on their unquestionably charming precocity. It is dangerous to shatter too indiscriminately the precept that children, no matter how engaging, should be seen and not heard. The Garrick Gaieties this summer is just a bit sure of itself.

Furthermore the cast has lost two of its most important performers and collected only one notably apt substitute, a girl "named Bobbie Perkins. She is dark and she dances and everybody liked her. The rest, aspiring artists who solve the mob and the servant problems in the various Theatre Guild productions, were confidently capable.

Two or three items in the evening are excruciatingly amusing, and only two or three fall flat. These last will certainly be elided. There will remain a compact and generally amusing assembly of impudence. Small favors should perhaps be gratefully received.