New Plays in Manhattan

Within the Gates (by Sean O'Casey; George Busbar & John Tuerk, producers). Playwright O'Casey's fantasy prompted Manhattan reviewers to go on record as follows: "Nothing so grand has risen in our impoverished theatre. . . . It is a humbling job to write about a dynamic drama like Within the Gates. . . . The theatre is richer today than it was 24 hours ago. . . . In comparison with Within the Gates, most of the plays that have come from overseas in recent years seem but feeble little fingers poking vainly at the moon.' " Irishman O'Casey, who had been brought from England for the U. S. premiere, was on hand to declare: "All fresh and imaginatively minded dramatists are out to release drama from the pillory of naturalism and send her dancing through the streets."

Bestirred with such ballyhoo, the aver age playgoer might have been justified in expecting more than the moments of sensuous beauty he got at Within the Gates. Mr. O'Casey's point is that the world has been considerably upset since the War, that Capitalism can offer no security, that in the crisis Mother Church has been discovered to be a humbug.

To illustrate this not unusual thesis, he sets his scene in a mythical Hyde Park, brings on Lillian Gish as The Young Whore,* her embittered mother as The Old Woman, her stepfather The Atheist, her real father The Bishop, her various lovers, pickups and The Dreamer. Each act is a season and each season has its appropriate song and dance by the folk in the park. As the seasons progress The Young Whore's lot grows sorrier. The Bishop offers her only the cold comfort of a nunnery. The Atheist is unhappily God-obsessed. The Old Woman, lamenting a lost soldier-lover, maunders about placing wreaths on a huge and sombre War memorial. Only The Dreamer, bravely played by curly-headed Bramwell Fletcher, stands up for The Young Whore when, as she is expiring, the wretched, drum-beating regiment of Down-And-Outs come to carry her off to perdition. This final scene finds Mr. O'Casey at his stoical, bitter best.

"Sing them silent, dance them still and laugh them into an open shame!'' cries The Dreamer. And the Old Woman scorns the impotent Bishop's sister in words that might have come from James Joyce : "Salaam, mem pukka memsahib. en' pardon her, en' pardon me, en' pardon us all for getting in the way of thy greatness; en' grant us grace to have faith in thy dignity en' importance, per benedicte pax hugger muggery ora pro puggery rigmarolum!"

Born 50 years ago in Dublin, Sean O'Casey did not learn to read until he was 12. He earned his bread selling news papers, grew up to be a bricklayer's helper, a stonebreaker and dock hand. Like R. C. Sherriff (Journey's End), he became interested in the theatre through a group of amateurs. "Everyone was getting tired of the Abbey plays," says he. "so I decided to write one for them." The amateurs as well as the Abbey turned the play down, but William Butler Yeats wrote an en couraging letter. O'Casey wrote two more, Harvest Festival and The Crimson in the Tri-Color. The latter was set down on paper a friend stole for the poverty-stricken playwright from a printing plant. These, too, failed to make the Abbey. But his next, The Shadow of a Gunman, did. World fame came with Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars. When the Abbey turned down The Silver Tassic, an anti-War piece, O'Casey split with the organization, moved to England. Within the Gates is the first O'Casey play without an Irish setting.

Conversation Piece (words & music by Noel Coward; Arch Selwyn & Harold B. Franklin, producers). Like race horses, playwrights are handicapped according to their past performances. If Conversation Piece were the work of a newcomer, critics would probably have acclaimed it as bright, charming entertainment, brimming with wit. tinkling with melody. But versatile Noel Coward has done better before. Matched with This Year Of Grace or Bitter Sweet, the latest Coward musical piece is at a disadvantage.

What story there is to this slim, slight comedy concerns an impoverished French gentleman, a refugee from the Revolution, named Paul (Pierre Fresnay). Turning adventurer, he picks up a virginal chanteuse, takes her across the Channel to Brighton. It is 1811; Brummell struts at Bath; in & out of prim Adam houses parades the world of fashion; Guardsmen wear tight breeches; George IV is Regent. Paul's plan is to marry off his Melanie (small, saucy Yvonne Printemps) to a highborn tripper, thereby assuring himself a pension. The Regent himself asks Melanie to a souper `a deux. The choleric Earl of Harringford offers her protection and a house just off Belgrave Square. His son. the Marquis of Sheere, also falls under Melanie's spell. Both Earl and Regent want something "a little less binding" than marriage. All of this makes little difference to Melanie, for it turns out that she is in love with her promoter after all.

Mile Printemps, making her first U. S. appearance since 1926 in the first English-speaking part she ever attempted, gives Mr. Coward's little tale her best. She trills four of the seven songs, trips lightly up & down the stage in flat heels and Lanvin costumes. Unlike Pierre Fresnay. who holds the record for the greatest number of performances in Musset and for speaking better English than any other French actor, Mile Printemps does not always articulate the graceful Coward lyrics sufficiently to make them intelligible. But she and M. Fresnay provide an agreeable, if not an eventful, evening in the theatre. Best tune: "I'll Follow My Secret Heart." Best lyric: "Regency Rakes."

No less versatile than Author Coward, who took the part of Paul in the London production of Conversation Piece, is Actress Printemps. With a face which suggests a composograph of Mary Pickford's and Fanny Brice's, she is at once the Eva LeGallienne and the Marilyn Miller of France. Author-Actor Sacha Guitry found her in the Folies Bergere when she was 15, developed her natural dramatic abilities and married her. The French, with an eye always cocked for romance, say that she was originally the friend of heroic Aviator Georges Guynemer. Two years ago Mile Printemps was separated from her corpulent husband, often billed as "the perfect lover," when his constant attentions palled.

Between Two Worlds (written & produced by Elmer Rice). In the transatlantic ship's company which comprises the cast of Between Two Worlds there is a prominent and familiar dozen who wear loud sports clothes, play bridge, drink, kiss other men's wives, speak of the "hairpin deck," depart noisily from each other promising "I'll be suing you." With these Playwright Rice is less concerned than with his principal characters: a sad-eyed Russian princess, a gloomy poet, a highly objectionable advertising man, a Junior Leaguer named Margaret Bowen (Rachel Hartzell) and a Soviet film director named N. N. Kovolev (Joseph Schildkraut).

M. Kovolev has managed to lift a number of good mechanical ideas from Hollywood, but his stay there was unproductive. About the only picture prospect that interested him was laid in a coal mine. He would have done a story about the mission monks if the producer had permitted him to portray them as agents of capitalist oppression grinding the early peons. At first the Junior Leaguer is repelled by M. Kovolev, attracted to the adman. But in mid-ocean the moonlight gets in its work and she accompanies the Muscovite to his stateroom. By the time Cherbourg is reached, M. Kovolev has smacked the princess in the jaw to remind her that her people used to knout his, the princess has found the poet sympathetic, the poet seems to have become gloomier than ever, and the adman and the Junior Leaguer have about decided to marry. M. Kovolev has discovered that he is capable of a small amount of sentiment toward a daughter of the aristocracy, but brushes it aside to get on with the World Revolution.

As a gallery of shipboard portraits. Between Two Worlds is highly satisfactory And Playwright Rice, the Sinclair Lewis of the U. S. Stage, has some interesting things to say, through Kovolev, about the world's general social organization. But as a dramatic story, Between Two Worlds begins nowhere, ends nowhere, develops nothing.

* Copyreaders on New York newspapers fell over themselves in sidestepping Mr. O'Casey's hilling for this character. In print she was variously labeled as "Young Harlot," "The Young Prostitute," "A Young Girl Who Has Gone Astray."

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