New Plays in Manhattan

No Questions Asked (By Anne Morrison Chapin; John Golden, producer) shows how a young patrician dipsomaniac (Ross Alexander) who boards a Staten Island ferry under the impression that it is a liner for Bermuda, achieves regeneration. On board, he prevents a young woman (Barbara Robbins), pregnant and unmarried, from tossing herself overboard. In the next scene he has married her and they are living in a penthouse with the young man's chatty but devoted mother (Spring Byington). Young Mrs. Raeburn is itching to tell her husband about her past and he is itching for the brandy bottle. Visits from her relatives and his predecessor help both cravings to be satisfied but by the time the play ends the Raeburns are on the way to better things. He knows that there will be a little stranger in his home but he does not seem to care.

Whether No Questions Asked is an argument, a melodrama or a penthouse comedy neither its author nor its producer seem to be sure. Its two qualifications as entertainment are a palatial but cozy set by P. Dodd Ackerman and three of Broadway's most pleasant and conversationally nimble actors.

After Such Pleasures (adapted from Dorothy Parker's book and her Laments for the Living by Edward F. Gardner; A. L. Jones, producer). During an intermission of The Lake, Dorothy Parker remarked to others in her party: "Well, let's go back and see Katharine Hepburn run the gamut of human emotion from A to B." This cruel mot epitomizes the spirit of After Such Pleasures, a categorical drubbing of womanhood and all its works from A to Z.

Victims: 1) A young lady whose three weeks in Paris have made her forget how to speak English. 2) A woman too intelligent not to know she is being made a fool of by her lover and too weak to do anything about it but talk. 3) A nervous bride who wrangles with her mate over nothing on the honeymoon train. 4) A snob who preens herself on her willingness to be nice to colored people. 5) An opportunist who takes advantage of a drunken proposal of marriage. 6) An aging actress sodden with drink and self-pity. 7) A shopgirl famed among her friends for repartee, whose favorite shaft is "Don't be an airedale."

Broomsticks, Amen! (by Elmer Greensfelder; produced by Thomas Kilpatrick). "All things come in threes," intones the patriarch of the Hofnagel family, holding aloft a length of red string. "Birth, life and death. Sun. moon and stars. Father, mother and child." The old man is "doing for" a neighbor's sick baby. From head to foot over the infant, lying on a table beneath his rapt gaze, he draws the red string from which he then plucks some invisible thing and casts it aside. He mutters "sanctious words," with his own hand scoops away the evil aura enveloping the small body. Smiling, he refuses payment from the reassured mother.

Old Man Hofnagel is a well-to-do farmer of the Pennsylvania Dutch country, known and respected from Allentown to Lancaster as a potent "hex-doctor." A seventh son, he believes implicitly in his own powers. He informs a village woman that if she would know which of several suitors to accept, she should put initialed onions beneath her pillow, be guided by the onion that sprouts first. For a lovecharm he prescribes a drop of blood in a glass of water. To keep witches out of a churn he recommends a hot flatiron. Benign, fond of his family, Father Hofnagel spits with loathing at the mere mention of regular doctors.

He accepts his daughter's marriage to a "medicaler" with bitter resignation but he is overjoyed when she bears a boy who, he believes, will inherit the Hofnagel power. When the baby contracts diphtheria Hofnagel prevents his son-in-law from administering antitoxin by shooting him in the shoulder, kills the baby with his own mumbo-jumbo. These events are developed in a sharp atmosphere of authenticity, tautly directed by Arthur Beckhard, expert handler of family groups (Another Language). Good performances: William F. Schoeller as Hofnagel, Jules Epailly as a rival wizard, Victor Kilian as a slow-witted yokel.

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