New Plays in Manhattan

Broadway Shadows is a painfully stupid play which Playwright Willard Earl Simmons has completely inundated with the contents of the old hokum bucket. Surrounded by ineptitudes of property, dialog and direction, the hero is purported to be a Social Registerite. He has left home to live in a $100-a-month "tenement" near Broadway because his rich father, who looks like a holidaying subway guard, believes his son to have raised a check. The young socialite at last finds happiness by marrying another inmate of the apartment house whose daughter--acted by Baby Marie Polizzotto--bakes a cake throughout the second act. Total time elapsed, for which audiences may be grateful: 90 minutes.

House Afire concerns a philosophical incendiary who sets a torch to unhappy homes in the hope that life will seem better in the embers' glow. He perceives, for instance, that young Mrs. Walter Elliott is uneasy in her installment-plan nest in Rockport, N. J., and that her husband shows no inclination to listen to her pleas for a more stimulating, if less propertied, life. A job of arson helps the Elliotts. Burned out, they take a studio apartment in the city, hobnob with the bare and bibulous, plan to spend their insurance money on a trip to Europe where Mrs. Elliott will absorb culture and scenery and Mr. Elliott promote a mysterious business scheme. But a pair of jealous wives back in New Jersey contrive to make it appear that Mrs. Elliott started the fire herself. Criminal proceedings are instituted. Not until the just incendiary has occasioned two more blazes, in the homes of the mean matrons, does the truth become apparent.

The character of the thoughtful fire-builder would seem to suggest a drama flickering with irony, but Playwright Mann Page has apparently overlooked this possibility, has devoted himself to the vapid story of the Elliotts. Inasmuch as they are wholly theatrical characters, limned without reality or wit, little can be said for the entertainment.

Troyka. When news of the Revolution reaches the bleak prison island of Sakhalin, the Russian commandant shoots himself in the head and the Siberian exiles are free to try to recapture their former lives, to wander back to wives and children. This situation is complicated for Semion and Ivan, fast friends, because they both love a beautiful Siberian, Natascha. Semion has mated with her for eight years; for five of those years Ivan, living in the same cabin, has manfully choked his desire. But when freedom comes, no such suppression is possible. Ivan confesses his passion to Semion, and they spend their last night together in a friendly vigil, neither approaching Natascha's bed. Next day, when each discovers that the other intends to remain with the girl, a conflict is inevitable. Semion is killed. His anguished mistress, believing that he has gone without bidding her farewell, accepts the offer of a Russian officer and leaves her homeland. Ivan remains, deprived of everything he has valued.

Adapted by Playwright Lula Vollmer from the Hungarian of Imre Fazekas, this harrowing story is never more than a quasi-historical melodrama. Its title is ambiguously symbolical: a troyka is a Russian carriage drawn by three horses, the centre horse wearing a halter around its neck. The play exhibits all the typical appurtenances of Russian drama, including characters named Bogulieff and Bolotoff, without any of the vitalizing insight of a Chekhov or a Tolstoy. Natascha is quietly played by Zita Johann, whose intelligent presence gave interest to last season's Machinal.

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