A New Play

Garden ef Weeds. A collection of hireling hoydens from the chorus rent but their love to a promiscuous promoter of Wall Street. On his estate at Asbury Park, N.J., he gives jamborees which scandalize the neighborhood. It is this millionaire's proud boast that he can make any Woman subservient to his lecherous leanings by muffling her good impulses in the mortal coil of evil environment.

All the girls whom he brings to heel he calls weeds, adding sardonic "ha-has" to show the kind of dog he is. This garden he cultivates with money, which ha describes as "a most powerful fertiliser," apparently forgetting that money has no smell. One of his mermaid myrmidons flees and takes shelter on the noble bosom of a rival rich man. When they return from their honeymoon, the villain hounds her at a dinner so that she misses a good meal. After the act has run long enough the husband explains that he has known her scarlet past all along, but has kept silence in order to learn the identity of the man who equipped her with it. Then he spits on his hands. The denouement might be illustrated by a diagram showing the stairs which the villain struck as he tumbled down them and achieved a broken neck at the bottom.

A sense of the theatric saves the play from the Elinor Glyn class. But it is like spoiling a good bedroom farce with too much cheap philosophy. Phoebe Foster as the harried heroine hardly fosters interest. She is pretty, but wears dresses that add nothing to her charm and years to her age. One wonders that Lee Baker, who grates his teeth as well as he can in the sinister role, does not prefer Lilyan Tashman, who seems at least as real as her slang.

Heywood Broun: "Garden of Weeds is just terrible. Leon Gordon [author] has proceeded on the theory the moron the merrier. Quite the silliest play of the season. . . ."

John Corbin: ". . . Lilyan Tashman, as a flashy and slangy chorus girl, provides genuine amusement."

E.W. Osborn: "So far the worst and dullest and most futile play of the season that there is no calculable second in the race. . . Our best emotion during the evening was one of sympathy for Miss Phoebe Foster. . . for being associated with the cast of this worthless production."

The New York Evening Post: "Garden of Weeds is unmitigated rubbish,"