New Plays

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Before the dawn of realism, romanticism, expressionism and the other isms by which the modern theatre is cataloged, there was a type of drawing room comedy which served as staple entertainment. Wilde, Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones all worked industriously in this medium, thereby gaining fame and gold. Of late years the drawing room has been virtually unoccupied. Nice people saying casual, witty things have nearly vanished. Therefore it is a great novelty to see one of these comedies again, suavely, smartly written by Frederick Lonsdale (Aren't We All) and even more suavely and smartly played by Ina Claire, Roland Young and A. E. Matthews.

The framework for their pleasantries is inconsequential. Mrs. Cheyney is suddenly discovered in society after a somewhat mysterious widowhood in far Australia. Two eligible lords promptly propose marriage, and are somewhat nonplused to find that she is a pearl-thief masked by a shrewd overlay of charm and manner. She repents in time, of course, to select the more attractive of her noble suitors.

If there is a surer and more irresistible comedienne on our stage than Ina Claire, theatre-goers have not seen her. Never did she play better. There are few leading actors so convincingly attractive as Mr. Young and Mr. Matthews. Of its type this entertainment has not been equaled this season, nor indeed since the same playwright's Aren't We All so agreeably occupied the time of Cyril Maude.

The Last Night of Don Juan. Edmond Rostand is best known in the U. S. for Cyrano de Bergerac, which Walter Hampden has been performing with such marked success on and off for the past two seasons. This play of his has never before been done in the U. S. It is now given at the Greenwich Village Theatre in the translation of Sidney Howard, and provides a curiously contradictory evening.

Don Juan is discovered on the brink of Hell; he obtains from the Devil ten years' respite; and is finally seen as the ten years end. The Devil brings back to damn him the 1,003 women whom he deceived in life.

There is great beauty of line in the text; greater beauty of line, mass and color in the settings of James Reynolds. Philosophical sagacity and finesse are provided in the argument, but the acting too often bleaches the brilliance of these formidably favorable factors. Stanley Logan and Augustin Duncan play Don Juan and the Devil; Mr. Logan gives a rather inept performance; Mr. Duncan only a fairly good one.

As a curtain-raiser the bill includes The Pilgrimage, a character study of small town life in France by Charles Vildrac. It was agreeable and excellently acted.

Hamlet, in modern clothes. The unusual but no less logical experiment of producing the greatest play of all time in the livery of the present has been made. It is declared almost unanimously one of the most successful theatrical experiments of recent years.

Before the production there were forebodings everywhere. People complained that a classic would be desecrated. These people were in distress because, as they thought, something was being done that had never been done before. In point of fact, Elizabethan productions of Hamlet were made in the current English costumes of the period. Garrick played Macbeth in the habiliments of his own time. The present production is merely the revival of an old idea. To dress it in modern clothes is not necessarily the best way to produce Hamlet but it is certainly one very good way.

Clarity is probably the chief feature of the new production. You can now perceive exactly what it is all about without peering, mentally, behind the bewildering mass of scene and costume. It turns out to be, as Shakespeare meant it, a credible, relatively simple and most amazingly shrewd commentary on human weaknesses.

Though not distinguished by a star, the company was far more capable than is usual with productions of the play. Helen Chandler's youthful Ophelia, the Queen of Adrienne Morrison and the Polonius of Ernest Lawford were exceedingly effective. Basil Sydney, as the Dane, gave a performance well in advance of many of the sounding entertainers who dedicate their seasons, or parts of them, to rearing dusty, traditional productions of the tragedy.

The Chariot Revue of 1926. Two or three days late and rudely battered by the angry autumn sea, Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrence, Jack Buchanan, Herbert Mundin and their English troupe arrived to play a few preliminary performances in Baltimore and open in Manhattan on schedule. The hasty and restless character of this introduction necessarily joggled the production badly. On the opening night the show ran over three hours and was weakened by very dull stretches. It will doubtless be concentrated, invigorated and altogether almost as good a show as the same London players brought over two seasons ago.

A hundred, some say two hundred dollars, were offered for a pair of seats to this eventful opening. Finance, society, literature and the stage were there, dressed brilliantly, in bulk. A goodly percentage did not remain for the benediction, which consisted of "God Save the King" and "The Star Spangled Banner." In the earlier hours they had heard the incomparable clown, Beatrice Lillie, sing various Noel Coward ballads, among them "The Roses Have Made Me Remember What Any Nice Girl Should Forget," and "The Little Slut of Six"; they had seen her imitate a serving maid most drolly; burlesque a classical dance on wires. They had seen the extraordinary actress and artiste, Gertrude Lawrence, dance and heard the mischief and the pathos of her singing; they had watched Jack Buchanan and his bulging trousers do all of the numerous feats an actor-comic-song-and-dance man can do in a revue. They had noted the lack of specially tempting music; they had rejoiced that this talented, intimate and unique production has once more been imported for their pleasure.

Naughty Cinderella. Irene Bordoni, some obscure French dramatists and Avery Hopwood have once more combined to spread abroad the glibly amusing message of an inconsequential farce. This French actress, one of the few by the way that have appealed to U. S. taste over several seasons, plays a secretary who pretends she is a cocotte. Against a Venetian background and the musical upholstery of incidental songs, the comedy will serve even better than Miss Bordoni's recent and not dissimilar entertainments.

With the exception of Orlando Daly, her comrade players are little known. Their talents far exceed their reputations. Of Miss Bordoni one can report only what has been reported many times. Her voice, her accent and particularly her reeling eyes are, as ever, unmistakably attractive.