New Plays

The Desert Song. The belle of Paris tires of the city, seeks romance in torrid Morocco. There she is wooed by the son of the French governor, mildly. The youth warbles:

My passion is gentle My appeal is mental.

It is of no avail. She cuts his face with a whip. In a twinkling he appears as no less a figure than the "Red Shadow," leader of native insurgents. Masked, the Flaming Youth makes successful love in the desert fashion. In the East when a man claps his hands twice, slaves rush out, carry the designated women off to be bathed and anointed, then served up to their lord and master. Herein, the high producer clapped his hands and 90-odd chorines went to the showers. There is a mystery and a romance about the East. A huge cast, gorgeous settings, some good singing and Vivienne Segal make The Desert Song alluring, but the sands of Broadway do not burn.

Beyond the Horizon. Just over the circle of patched hills, where the sun goes, lies the elusive beauty that, to Robert Mayo, is abundant life. Always he has felt the imperious urge to follow in search of it. When finally the opportunity appears--a chance to ship on his uncle's boat--he suffers it to pass because love for Ruth Atkins holds him to the farm. Robert's brother, Andrew, has also fallen under Ruth's spell. Incapable of bearing the constant sight of her in the arms of his brother, Andrew, a born farmer, seeks refuge in the ship that Robert has forsaken. Both men cross their natures. Both come to ruin. After futile years of wandering, Andrew finds his way back to the fields. Robert, dying of tuberculosis and despair, stumbles to the top of the hill for a last earthly vision of the horizon that had always beckoned to him. Dead, he enters who can say what felicity? The production is beautiful. After doing the Babbitts for almost a year, Robert Keith covers himself with glory as the dreamer of the hill. Aline MacMahon, woodenly hopeless, is the woman who saved neither others nor herself.

The Constant Wife. And what have the privations of monogamy to do with wifely constancy? queries W. Somerset Maugham in a play for children over sixteen. His heroine, Constance Middleton (Ethel Barrymore), observes her husband's liaisons with an indulgent smile, tacitly assumes the right to go and do likewise --and does. Her husband can take it or leave it. As the curtain falls, he takes it with a hard gulp, while she sweeps off to Italy for a six weeks' amorous sojourn with her bachelor admirer. A daughter is in "infinitely more competent hands," a boarding school. Love had slipped away years before. Playwright Maugham presents what, a decade or two ago, would have been termed a "problem play," done with a modish superciliousness. He offers two reasons for a woman's being faithful to an errant spouse: her debt for board and lodging; her naturally monogamous nature as contrasted with the more catholic affections of the male. In the play the first cause for fidelity is blotted out by Constance's solvent enterprise in the interior decorating business. As for the second, it is simply an argument advanced by a Victorian mother-in-law with urbane cynicism, who declares that the only test of true love is whether you can use your husband's toothbrush. The dialogue is conscious of its own glitter. The audience is aware that actors settle themselves, preen themselves, for the utterance of shining platitudes, universal conversation in the pseudo-Voltairian manner. Ethel Barrymore's acting is the stage Ethel of recent years, to which an Ethel-drawn audience responds with laughter, palpably content. Percy Hammond: "Miss Barrymore . . . slender, fair, 36 and super-charming."

Say It With Flowers. Brock Pemberton, impresario, is experimenting with an aftertheatre theatre, apparently with success. For his first 11:30 p. m. show, he presents Pirandello's Man, Beast, and Virtue, at the Garrick Theatre on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday nights. The other current Pirandello play, Naked, might lead theatregoers to suppose that this one from the same pen is also dull, verbose, untheatrical. They will be surprised, for in none of Broadway's numerous playhouses is such a constant, hilarious furor maintained. With hands discreetly hiding the lips that betray unseemly amusement, the audience chortles furtively but distinctly. For this Pirandello play is broad. Sea Captain Petella, a blustering fellow, who returns to his wife once every three months or so, absolutely refuses to do his natural duty as a husband. He wants no more children. Professor Paolina assumes the Captain's domestic responsibilities with embarrassing consequences. Mrs. Petella will have a child. How to make the home-coming Captain do his duty on a 24-hour leave, thus afford a respectable explanation for the oncoming offspring--ah, that is for the doctors and apothecaries to work out. This play is something for every editor of a respectable dramatic column to worry about. Osgood Perkins, who scored so high as the very wisecracker in Loose Ankles, now takes over the perturbations of Professor Paolina with equal success. Carlotta Irwin, the harassed Mrs. Petella, is to laugh (heartily). In fact, the whole show is a riot far more entertaining than contemporary night clubs.

Ned McCobb's Daughter, Carrie, is played by Clare Eames, slim, high-voltage onetime Lady Macbeth in the late James K. Hackett's Shakespearian swashbuckling (crowned by France). Sidney Howard, who knew what they wanted, provides her and the Theatre Guild with an effective Down East chariot, brought up to date with a bootleg plot. Carrie's no-account spouse has committed the indiscretion of appropriating $2,000 in Kennebec ferry fares. Babe, a genial-villainous, gold-toothed brother-in-law from Manhattan lends the sum--when allowed to use the family barn for liquor storage. As a matter of principle, Carrie at length enters objection, threatens exposure; Babe submits; Carrie, principle gained, withdraws objection. One scene stages the home-watched coffin of Father Ned, for realistic, mainly risible character study. Although the construction is loose-jointed, this is rather good old-time melodrama. The dialogue has genuine folk-flavor. Miss Eames, fire beneath ice, reminded one critic of Queen Elizabeth in preposterous court theatricals. Alfred Lunt (Babe) shared the compliments; Margalo Gillmore pleased as a hot-lipped kitchen baggage.