New Plays in Manhattan

Namiko San, a Japanese opera with libretto and music by Aldo Franchetti, features Tamaki Miura, Japanese soprano. Little Mme. Miura's fingers are like daisy petals in careful array. Her voice carries a suggestion of tartness. Her movements are all nicely studied. Her role is that of a 16-year-old maiden of ancient Japanese legend, in love with a Buddhist monk from the white mountain tops, possessed by a tyrannous Daimio, lord of the low, broad acres.

Lombardi, Ltd. Every sizable town and city in the U. S. has been visited by Leo Carrillo in this play, now re-revived by Producer Murray Phillips, in which the hero, as head and heart of a modiste business, breaks a volume of English dialogue over an Italian tongue. After the old-fashioned pattern of all such plots, Lombardi must experience business failure and heart-jolt before he awakens to the fact that it is not the dazzling beauty of Phyllis Manning that he loves but the demure companionship of Norah Blake. A fashion show helps the entertainment, as does the popular admission charge. But most of the fun is supplied by Actor Carrillo himself, as Lombardi, whose spirit, dammed by linguistic obstructions of all kinds, nevertheless overflows everything in an indomitable, spluttering, blustering fuss.

Julius Caesar. Every year the Players' Club presents a classical drama for a short run. This year, during last week only, it was Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, with incidental music by Charles L. Safford. The confusion of brilliance in the cast resulted from William Courtleigh (Caesar), James Rennie (Antony), Basil Rathbone (Cassius), Tyrone Power (Brutus), Mary Young (Portia), Homer Croy (Mob), Bruce Bairnsfather (Mob).

Baby Mine. Some 17 years ago, when a primitive U. S. cinema public chewed peanuts in its motion picture palaces, Roscoe Conkling ("Fatty") Arbuckle started on his way to fame. Like other actors, he preferred what was then the greater glory and emolument of the legitimate stage to the comparatively bastard screen. Baby Mine was his first vehicle (in stock company). In 1910, they say, it was a smart and even froward thing. In 1927, it looks like a bustle in a Shubert show. Mr. Arbuckle enacts a pulpy mass who alternately stews in sweaty fear and freezes in gelatinous embarrassment, because a lady of his acquaintance tries to win back her husband with a show of triplets, the same being potentially the offspring of any male in the cast. Actor Arbuckle, exiled from cinema, was cordially received on his return to the legitimate stage.