New Plays in Manhattan

Maurice Chevalier. This keen, young, handsome French song-singer has long been a good reason for a trip to Paris. Now he has come to the U. S. Primarily he came to make motion pictures but, while the operator is changing the reels, Mr. Ziegfeld has captured him for that Midnight Frolic which Mr. Ziegfeld insists is "atop" the New Amsterdam Theatre. Best songs: about Valentine, and M. et Mme. Elephant.

The U. S. has nothing of its own quite like Chevalier. He effervesces songs and, with fleeting pantomime, gives them the quality of fine etchings slightly caricatured. Having risen from the streets of Paris he has the wistfulness of their shadows. The Paris music-halls have given him a touch of rowdiness. The War, in which he was wounded and captured, left him with unbridled spontaneity.

The Chevalier costume--un smoking (dinner jacket) and straw hat -- is a vestigial remnant of the days before the War when, as Guest Contributor William Bolitho of the New York World says: "Young men dressed like this in the evenings and had fun. . . . Look at Chevalier's queer straw hat with the same shiver as you see the Cap of Liberty stuck up in Tammany Hall, or the Crown of England. There is human history in it."

Pleasure Bound. The time-worn criticism that girls are overstressed and underdressed in the modern revue is met by the Messrs. Shubert in their latest effort. A girl-show which also brings forth Phil Baker, Jack Pearl, Shaw & Lee and Fred Hillebrand, may be accounted a balanced production. Moreover, besides all the homebred curves and complexions, there is a spick-and-Spanish dancer named Rosita Moreno.

Kibitzer. Fannie Brice, playing Cleopatra, once described herself as "a bad woman but good company." Kibitzer is that sort of play. Structurally it has its weaknesses, but as an evening's entertainment there is no better bargain of its kind on Broadway at the moment. It is a Jewish Lightnin'.

The story, which deals with a kosher lamb in Wall Street, is of little moment. It is transcended by a shrewd and faithful character study. The blundering sciolist who looks over mankind's shoulder in the game of life and seeks to direct the play of each card at last has been caught and held by the theatre's three walls. Even the attempt to make him noble has been renounced. He is revealed ridiculous and poignant.

To this role Edward G. Robinson, one of the authors, gives a finely shaded performance. Mr. Robinson has for several years been playing snarling caitiffs in the wave of crime plays. His transformation into the well-meaning meddler of Kibitzer reveals him as the possessor of an unusually clear sense of comedy values. Alexis Polianov, Eugene Powers and Hobart Cavanaugh also are worthy of mention, and Producer-Director Patterson McNutt is to be credited with a steady-handed job.

Let Us Be Gay. Francine Larrimore, last seen in Chicago, easily carries Rachel Crothers' new play on her frequently-shrugged shoulders. The plot--a divorced couple's reunion brought about by his attractions for another girl--contains no weighty situations. The Crothers dialog is blithe if not brilliant.

Flight. Twenty years ago this would have been great to read in a hammock. Now, however, even maiden aunts who still believe in Santa Claus realize that the stork is just a bird, so it doesn't quite come off. It is the old one about the girl who flirts with a man to win a bet. She also flirts with another man, with no money up. By the end of the second act she knows which one she loves but she doesn't know which one is the father of the prospective arrival. It all comes out all right, however, and there are plenty of epigrams. And it really isn't so absurd as it sounds, thanks to a brilliant performance by Actress Miriam Hopkins, who seems to become a better actress with every new play, while growing not one whit less personable.

The Broken Chain. To the tempo of a chant Playwright William J. Perlman has set what might have been a stirring tale of oldtime Judaism v. Modern Life. Mary Fowler and Frank McGlynn do their best but the result is pretty heavy.

Harlem. Not the traditional trouble between black and white but the everyday quarrelling between black and black is the theme of this newest of plays hung on the Black Belt. The story has the active drama of guns and crime and the passive drama of frustration. It is played remarkably by an all-but-one Negro cast.

Airways, Inc. Novelist John Dos Passos, always penetrating, has spent much of the force of this play about down-trodden aircraft workers, by trying to cover too much territory. Best scene: the strikers fighting the police.