Magnolia

Magnolia. Booth Tarkington tells a tale of the lower Mississippi in the costume and accent of the South of years ago. A most practical young man is ejected from his father's house because he is unwilling to fight a duel. He returns--seven years later--as the notorious "Cunnel" Blake, whose voice makes the forests to tremble. Even the notorious General Orlando Jackson quakes at the roar thereof. But the faithful heroine is not deceived. Beneath the " Cunnel's" roar she still hears the softly sentimental whisper of the poet-lover.

Author Tarkington attempts to prove that courage is simply knowing that you are safe. When the coward poet learned to shoot, he became brave.

Leo Carrillo is entrusted with the task of giving reality to this theory. He is good but never great. The saving humor of the play is well developed by the remainder of the cast, particularly Miss Bryan-Allen and Malcolm Williams (General Orlando Jackson).

The Jolly Roger. A. E. Thomas has created a pirate drama cunningly carved from sea yarns of long ago with a cutlass of pointed wit. He has worked along lines made familiar to the great American audience by Captain Applejack.. He swashes more, however, than did the creators of that popular satire. He dramatizes his burlesque rather than burlesquing his drama. He maintains a beautiful, deep blue background of sea and sky, and salts his situations with oaths and the glitter of daggers at every course.

Out of nowhere Adam Trent arrives on board the pirate brig. Immediately preceding him comes Hilda Borner, beautiful maiden from a captured schooner in the time honored guise for maidens aboard pirate brig-cabin boy's gear. Promptly Trent subdues the crew. Promptly Trent falls in love with her. Promptly the crew, too, discover her sex. There follow ominous and entertaining rattles of the daggers of romantic drama.

Pedro de Cordoba, cast as the triumphant Trent, plays with a fine technique but without humor and the indispensable grand mannerisms of a pirate hero. The ferocity of the crew and the fine feminine helplessness of Carroll McComas are wholly satisfactory.

The production is the first of a series from which Walter Hampden hopes to evolve a permanent repertory theatre, although he did not himself appear in The Jolly Roger.

Alexander Woollcott: "An entertaining piece."

Burns Mantle: "Dramatization of a daydream."

The Whole Town's Talking. The main interest in this heavy-hearted farce lies in the fact that Mr. Grant Mitchell, after what was supposedly a furious fight in the darkness, is disclosed perched on the chandelier. Otherwise the proceedings are negligible.

Little Miss Bluebeard. It seems necessary simply to note that Avery Hopwood's signature is attached to this interlude and that Irene Bordoni emerges from musical comedy to play the lead. Anyone who has even a cursory acquaintance with matters theatrical will conclude correctly that it is a farce, that it deals in marital problems with an engaging indelicacy, that it smartly amusing. Added footnotes must contain the intelligence that Miss Bordoni sings four songs with her customary success; that Bruce McRae plays her leading man; that one Eric Blore, a recent acquisition from London, does the ultimate silliest as a silly Englishman.

John Corbin: "A world without such pieces would be appreciably duller."

Alexander Woolcott: "A quite enjoyable concoction."