New Plays in Manhattan

The Wind and the Rain (by Merton Hodge; George Kondolf and Walter Hart, producers), is an investigation of quiet happenings among a group of Edinburgh medical students. Totally dissimilar to the U. S. collegians in She Loves Me Not or the hospital internes of Men in White, the students in The Wind and the Rain use such words as "mucky," "dirty little snurge" and "poops to you" but toward the fundamental problems of their academic life their attitude is dignified and serious. Charles Tritton (Frank Lawton) is a hypersensitive undergraduate, devoted to his mother who runs an antique shop in London and eager to please her by marrying his childhood sweetheart. When he falls in love with a lovely sculptress (Rose Hobart) whose studio is around the corner from Mrs. McFie's Edinburgh boarding house, he feels less satisfied than frightened. Without any uproar The Wind and the Rain shows how he overcomes his tremors over the space of five years. By that time, his friends are doctors. His mother is dead. He has broken with his fiancee. The sculptress, who has been his mistress, expects to be his wife. A new boy is moving into Tritton's room, with a suitcase full of bones and Gray's Anatomy.

British plays about college life, for which Young Woodley is still the best prototype, are as unlike their U. S. counterparts as the characters in them. Nothing happens in the first two acts of The Wind and the Rain. The climax of the third arrives when Tritton passes his examinations. What gives the play its warmth and charm is the reticent natural ness in Merton Hodge's writing, the good acting of Mildred Natwick, Rose Hobart and Frank Lawton.

Theodora, The Quean* (By Jo Milward and J. Kerby Hawkes; Jo Graham, producer) is a tedious transplantation of Pierre Louys' famed courtesan Aphrodite from pagan Alexandria to Byzantium of the 6th Century, as thoroughly papier-mache as the hollow helmets deposited on Theodora's dressing-table. She (Elena Miramova), aided & abetted by her mother in the practice of love ("I'm neither hot nor cold but proficient"), is run after by all the city's young bloods who address her as "Theodora of the Circus." Drunk with power, she publicly mocks the empress, is thrown into a dungeon, rescued by the disdainful Regent (Minor Watson) with whom she falls in love. She wants to be his wife but he, a onetime goat-herder, will have her only for occasional recreation. The emperor dies (offstage). A coup d'etat plumps a pretender on the throne (offstage). To save the Regent by ridiculing him, Theodora regales the circus mob with an account of his private conduct (offstage). Humiliated and expecting death, he forces Theodora to marry him. When another coup d'etat destroys the pretender the Regent becomes Emperor and the quean becomes a queen.

All the King's Horses (book & lyrics by Frederick Herendeen; music by Edward A. Horan; Harry L. Cort and Charles H. Abramson, producers). For this season's few musical shows in Manhattan/- this studiously unoriginal little opus afforded company rather than competition. The story is labeled: "A Royal Escapade in a Little European Kingdom. . . . Let Us Call It Langenstein." The music is cacophonous except for "I Found a Song" which decorative Nancy McCord and spry little Guy Robertson spend most of their time singing. For humor Librettist Herendeen has relied heavily on the outlandish sound of U. S. slang in dreamy old Langenstein.

A Hat, a Coat, a Glove (by William Speyer, adapted by William A. Drake; Crosby Gaige and D. K. Weiskopf, producers). "Tell Mr. Cravath to be there by one," says Lawyer Robert Mitchell (A. E. Matthews) to his secretary in this play. This cool second-act instruction does not mean that famed Paul D. Cravath is about to be seen in A Hat, a Coat, a Glove. It merely shows that Mr. Mitchell has a 16-cylinder legal mind, with big names in his address book. For such a bland, patrician barrister, he is in a most astonishing predicament. His wife (Nedda Harrigan) has left him to sin with a young illustrator (Lester Vail). The illustrator has fished a drowning prostitute out of the East River, rushed off to ask Mrs. Mitchell what to do about her. Lawyer Mitchell has chosen this awkward first act moment to call upon the illustrator and settle the score with him. He finds the prostitute there alone, accidentally shoots her dead. When the illustrator is accused of murder, Mrs. Mitchell is impudent enough to ask her husband to defend him. Lawyer Mitchell is weighing the advantages of doing so when he orders his secretary to arrange his lunch appointment.

A meal with the senior partner of Cravath, de Gersdorff, Swaine & Wood would doubtless have made a much better third act than the one offered in A Hat, a Coat, a Glove. It is a gloomy and exceed ingly unreal courtroom scene in which A. E. Matthews, the suavest English actor on the U. S. stage, bites his nails politely while he refutes a rumbling district attorney. It ends with Lawyer Mitchell telling his wife to blow her nose. She indicates that she loves him still by borrowing his handkerchief.

*Quean, from the Anglo-Saxon cwene, a low woman.

/-As Thousands Cheer, Murder at the Vanities, Roberta, Ziegfcld Follies.

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