New Play in Manhattan

Her Majesty, the Widow (by John Charles Brownell) is the vehicle which oldtime Tragedienne Pauline Frederick (Madam X) put together in San Diego, Calif, in May 1933. After a 13-month drive across the western plains, it arrives on Broadway creaking like a stagecoach. So familiar has Miss Frederick become with every bolt and board in its rusty structure that she is inclined to overact, grimacing broadly at every tiresome turn, popping wide her eyes and flapping her hands at each sorry nuance.

Miss Frederick is cast as an amiable widow called Jane Seymour. Her long-lost suitor, the itinerant violinist, is labeled Peter Stuyvesant. Inept are Widow Seymour's efforts to disentangle her son from the siren snares of a "voluptuous" and "continental" woman with whom Violinist Stuyvesant was once embroiled. There is a teetotaling housekeeper who gets drunk, and a happy ending. Sample comedy, when the addle-headed housekeeper hears the name of a famed sexologist mentioned: "If that Mr. Havelock Ellis comes around here, I'll slam the door in his face!"

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