New Plays in Manhattan

Liberty Jones (by Philip Barry, music by Paul Bowles, produced by The Theatre Guild) is an allegory about Democracy and the dangers thereto. A pretty young lady named Liberty Jones is very ill in the home of her Uncle Sam, an amiable but confused businessman. She is menaced by Three Shirts of Brown, Black and Red hue, who keep appearing on the balcony outside. No remedy for her has been found by four pompous doctors called Medicine, Letters, Divinity and Law. At length, however, Liberty is raised from her sickbed, loved and defended by Tom Smith, a very high-flying aviator.

Paul Bowles's music is a good deal more mature than this allegorical scheme, but it, too, is lacklustre. On the credit side is Designer Raoul Pene du Bois's most effective setting, a chill, ominous picture of dawn in the park, which is never matched by anything that occurs on the stage. Red-haired Nancy Coleman is a lovely Liberty, especially in the cool blue satin nightgown of her sickroom period. John Beal manages quite a trick in playing Tom Smith without too strong a suggestion of Eagle Scoutism. Neither manages to breathe life into Mr. Barry's symbolism.

Playwright Barry replied to the generally unfavorable criticism of Liberty Jones with an article in the New York World-Telegram: ". . . I knew that to be what I wanted it to be it must have a childlike candor, a simplicity, an innocence. ... I wanted the play to have a pristine quality--to look like a fresh-minted dime and to spin like one. I think it does. ..."

Tanyard Street (by Louis D'Alton, produced by Jack Kirkland). In this solemn drama by one of Dublin's Abbey Theatre playwrights, an ardent young Irish Catholic comes home paralyzed after fighting for Franco. One night a bouquet of flowers is mysteriously moved from his bedroom shrine to his bed, and the next morning he is suddenly well. The cure is hailed as a miracle. Thereupon the young man decides to renounce his wife for the priesthood, and she agrees to take the vow of chastity which will allow him to do it, even though she has for some time desired his anticlerical brother.

Two things make the play hard to take seriously. One is the muddled writing of the author. The other is Barry Fitzgerald, whose role is comic relief. This Abbey Theatre veteran is one of the best and funniest actors alive. He appears here as a ramshackle, dyspeptic Irishman who can never get his coat, pants and shirt properly assembled, and who treats his wretched digestion as the most important topic in Ireland. His comedy not only relieves the play's solemnities--it annihilates them.

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