New Play in Manhattan

George Washington Slept Here (by George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, produced by Sam H. Harris). One of the high comic themes of American life concerns the nervous city people who want to get back to the soil--but not so far back as to avoid rural electrification. To this thesis Kaufman & Hart now devote their practiced wits. Ernest Truex plays the part of a little man who buys a Pennsylvania farm where Washington supposedly bedded (actually it turns out to have been Benedict Arnold). The acid Jean Dixon is his wife, forced among other pastoral ordeals to watch a well-drilling operation strike successive layers of mud and eventually a cemetery ("Anyone we know?" she cries).

Dudley Digges gives a superb portrait of a stuffy uncle, and there are effective minor players, especially Bobby Readick as a malevolent small boy who is referred to by Mr. Truex as "Huckleberry Capone." But despite the excellent cast, the playwrights' wit fails to explode, merely intermittently sputters. Even Shakespeare came his croppers; presumably Kaufman & Hart are entitled to theirs.

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