New Plays

The Scalawag. David Higgins is known over the length and breadth of the land for His Last Dollar, a play written, acted, produced by him for more than a decade. In this new piece, he again enacts a lovable, old scamp bent on doing good in the wickedest ways. He would marry his pretty granddaughter to the grandson of his partner (in the garage business). The grandson helps himself into trouble by helping out a bootlegging World War veteran. But the aged rascal fixes everything. The play consists for the most part of "canned" gag situations of the reliable "old soak" brand.

Le Maire's Affairs. There are those who deplore burlesque in favor of more subtle satire like Americana. Others love display, like Lucky. Some would prefer Le Maire's Affairs, full of crudely ridiculous skits, awkward clowning (by Charlotte Greenwood), amazing absurdities (by Lester Allen), pretty chorus girls, striking ensembles. Two numbers, the cameo dance and the minstrel drill are as pleasing to the eye as anything in town. The skits are funny--at times, definitely embarrassing; Ted Lewis' band jazzes well toward the end. After a few more presentations, the show will probably be corrected for tempo. Then it will be as good an entertainment as a tired man can find in the revue houses.

Lost. The program said "a play in three acts by A. E. Thomas and George Agnew Chamberlain." A. E. Thomas has done so much better that many people suspected his share in the proceedings was slight. It is about a Connecticut Yankee (Ramsey Wallace) seeking escape from Brazilian tropics, and his wife's apparent infidelity. While thus employed, he wins the heart of a native girl (Rosalinde Fuller), but decides in the end to go back to Red Hill, Conn., with his wife (Mona Kingsley). The native girl commits suicide.

Mariners. In this drama by Clemence Dane, scattered episodes play around the central theme--a woman (Pauline Lord) whose love becomes insensate fury. Once a barmaid, this Lilly marries Benjie Cobb (Arthur Wontner), brilliant student. His devotion to his work as minister of a small parish preys upon her mind. Why should he stick in a mudhole? Why permit his ludicrous preaching to interfere with his attention to her? She hates his cloth, his parish, his sacrifice. The parish, in turn scorns her. For 20 years her husband has struggled to reconcile her to his life. With all the sincerity she can command for a repulsive duty, she strives to conquer her own antipathy. It is not strong enough. When Benjie stays late for choir rehearsal, she locks him out of the house. When Benjie defends his conduct she rushes upon him with a fork, more murder in her maddened heart than in her weak hand.

Her rage mounts when he refuses a larger parish with commensurately greater salary, offered by a onetime college mate, now risen to earldom. She cried out against his willful abnegation, never realizing that it is her own unfitness for companionship in such an office that prompted the refusal. In their shuttered home, where even the sunlight enters in bars, they fight together against her fatal outbursts of passion. One minute she is all contrition, The next she bursts into tempests of vulgar derision, howling, greedy strictures, detestable to the audience as she is to herself in saner moment. On one occasion, Benjie goes out into a storm to tend victims of an influenza epidemic. On his going, she shrieks a wild whim: "I hope you never come back." He comes back, only to die of the disease contracted on that occasion. Then the poor woman becomes completely mad, upbraids her husband for "leaving her in the lurch." In the parish is a spinster (Haidee Wright) who loved the kind rector in her own secret heart. She, stung to cruelty by the widow's condemnation of the dead, reveals that it was the wife who drove her husband to his death by her heartless passions. Thereupon, Lilly staggers through the night storm to his grave, is found dead the next morning. Director Guthrie McClintic drew the many loose ends together as skillfully as possible, the cast caught whatever of mystery and truth was in their parts, yet the whole emerges only an overtone of a great sorrow.

The Legend of Leonora. "Leonora is an unspeakable darling, and this is all the guidance that can be given the lady playing her." Such was the terse instruction of Sir James M. Barrie, in one of his weaker moments. Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Maude Adams, years ago, tried to obey him. Last week Grace George tried at the Ritz Theatre, Manhattan -- with more success than is customary at a rather wheezy revival. Leonora, among other things, is seven women in one: 1) She has a sense of humor. 2) She hasn't. 3) She is oldfashioned, fond. 4) She is flirtatious. 5) She is a suffragette. 6) She is a mother who spills tears at her son's first request for a razor. 7) She is a whimsical murderess who pushes a man out of a railway carriage because he opens a window when her little daughter has a sniffy cold. Of course, the jury finds her "not guilty"; of course, Captain Rottray, R. N. (Bruce McRae) wins the heart of this seven-womaned woman when he falls off a hobbyhorse in her nursery in the third act. Be it known that this is a play "only for those who have ever had a mother."

Cherry Blossoms. Oriental hokum, whanging of gongs, plenty of singing but no palpable hit, bizzarre costumes, gaudy scenery, Desiree Ellinger and Howard Marsh --a typical musical comedy by the Messrs. Shubert. A plot from that ten-year-old fantastic play of Japan, The Willow Tree--but one would never have guessed it.