New Plays in Manhattan

Spook House. For the multitude who enjoy detective stories and mystery plays in which ghastly white arms slide out of hidden panels, murdered bodies mysteriously disappear to the embarrassment of the burly and thwarted constabulary, Spook House provides staple entertainment. Its scene is laid in a mansion in Westchester County, N. Y., whose owner has been mysteriously slain and whose housekeeper creeps about presaging dire events. In addition to its standard equipment of revolvers, bowie knives and falling chandeliers, Spook House also contains one funny Irish policeman, one extremely competent and clever gunman, one beauteous female operative of the Department of Justice.

Garrick Gaieties. Their elders and betters having gone away for the summer and abandoned the neo-Andalusian splendor of the Theatre Guild's playhouse, the Bright Young People who occasionally perform under the Guild's aegis when a production of doubtful dignity is to be put on--e.g., Red Rust (TIME, Dec. 30)--set out to disport themselves in a blithesome intimate revue. Guild subscription members flocked to see, recalling that it was the first Garrick Gaieties (1925) which uncovered Composer Richard Rodgers and Lyricist Lorenz Hart ("Manhattan," "Sentimental Me," "April Fool"), Funnymen Romney Brent and Sterling Holloway, and the young ladies now individually famed as Libby Holman, June Cochrane, Dorothea Chard. At the end of Act I, audiences left such memories to dramatic historians, cackled instead about what capital fun they were having with the present Bright Young People.

The 27 scenes were packed with bed testing, summer hotel scandal and other romantic biology. As in previous Gaieties, current people and events were treated with all due disrespect.

Albert Carroll satirically skewered Chinese Actor Mei Lan-fang with elaborate gesture and thin, cracked voice. Another famed actor taken up was Grover Aloysius ("Gardenia") Whalen, who lately returned to Wanamaker's department store from the Police Commissionership of New York. Sings he (Philip Loeb):

I'm back among the drapers

Because the daily papers

Hadn't room enough for Jimmy* and me.

To Philip Loeb, who directed the production, go most of the show's honors. He is the funnyman who had the famed Kaufman-Lardner line in June Moon:

Should a father's carnal sins

Blight the life of babykins?

In this show his part is fat. He successively impersonates a cinemagnate, a criminal lawyer, a spreeing stockbroker. His biggest laugh is obtained during his harem courtship of Actress Edith Meiser, with the line:

And does the incense

Obliterate the sin sense?

Most tuneful air is Willard Robison's Lazy Levee Loungers; hardest plugged, Out of Breath. There is also an enthusiastic if individualistic chorus of eight (24 less than the number of lyricists, librettists, songwriters).

Change Your Luck. Southerners and readers of Sherwood Anderson's writings know well the significance of the expression "change your luck" with reference to Negroes. Artist Cleon Throckmorton, lately associated with Author Christopher Morley in the presentation of burlesqued revivals in Hoboken, N. J., has been persuaded to give this title to a Negro revue which he has produced and for which he has executed some excellent scenery. The entertainment is not of a very high order. It includes a three-round fight between two colored girls.

*Mayor James John Walker.

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