New Plays in Manhattan

Wednesday's Child (by Leopold Atlas; H. C. Potter and George Haight, producers) is a heartfelt, heavily underscored polemic on the sufferings of a sensitive child whose parents flunk in matrimony.* Most effective of its nine scenes is the second, in which Bobby Phillips (Frank M. Thomas Jr.) and his playmates assemble in a debris-littered vacant lot to build a fortress. The precise meaning of the word bastard is the subject of academic discussion which turns personal when Bobby is truculently catechized as to whether his father is the salesman who occasionally comes home to his mother, or the stranger she has been seen kissing in a parked automobile. Bobby tights off his tormentors, plods wretchedly home.

He wakes from haunted sleep to hear his father slapping his mother (Katherine Warren), to hear himself referred to as "unfortunate." When the mother leaves for good, he follows, implores her vainly to return. He is haled into a divorce court, tortured for testimony by opposing counsel. By judicial decree he spends eight unhappy months with the mother who has married her well-meaning paramour, returns to his father who is also planning to remarry. When he falls ill, his parents bicker over his bed, discover that neither wants him much, are relieved when the doctor suggests a military school. There Bobby is advised by another divorced boy" to accept the gifts and less & less frequent visits of his parents with equanimity, to "wait."

Acting laurels in Wednesday's Child are heaped upon the tousled yellow head of Frank M. Thomas Jr. A pouting, cherubic tot of 12, he made his stage debut at nine months, got experience in Carrie Nation, Little Boy, Thunder on the Left. His mother plays the trained nurse in Wednesday's Child; his father (The Gods We Make) is for the time being "at liberty."

Mahogany Hall (by Charles Robinson; produced by John R. Sheppard Jr.). For a long time after the Civil War, respectable women of Washington risked their reputations if they were seen walking on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue between 9th and 15th Streets. That was because from the south side nearly to the Potomac stretched the city's redlight district. It was called "Hooker's Division'' after doughty General Joseph ("Fighting Joe") Hooker, who once stabled his troops there and made thoughtful arrangements for their oblectation. The Division's No. 1 house was a rococo manse known as ''Mahogany Hall."

But for that historic clue, the scene of Mahogany Hall might be any one of a dozen U. S. cities. The play is a moony obeisance to that fount of so much good & bad dramatic material, the brothel. Across its one majestic set parade half a dozen wenches, chipper lads and befuddled dignitaries in dinner jackets, a grafting commissioner, sinister "backers." a youth in love with an inmate, a twittering astrologist. a blundering social worker, a moody "Professor" (Eduardo Ciannelli), a baleful headmistress (Olga Baclanova ) who keeps everything under control until she falls in love with the Professor. It takes almost the whole third act for her to tell him her feelings, for him to spurn her politely.

*The title derives from the following nursery rhyme: Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace, Wednsday's child is full of woe, Thursdays child has far to go Fridays child is loving and giving Saturdays child works hard for its living, And a child that's born on the Sabbath Day Is fair and wise and good and gay.

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