New Plays in Manhattan

High Tor (by Maxwell Anderson; Guthrie McClintic, producer). Playwright Anderson went as far away in time and space as 16th Century England to set the scene of his two best known works, Elizabeth the Queen and Mary of Scotland. Period of High Tor, his first verse comedy, is largely contemporary. Locale is just three miles down South Mountain Road from Maxwell Anderson's home near New City, N. Y.

Above the broad Tappan Zee, above Haverstraw, above the ledge-hugging concrete strip of U. S. Route 9 W rises a palisade actually called High Tor. Storms lash it furiously. And Playwright Anderson believes that the airplane beacon on its top was twice bowled over by stormy Dutchmen marooned for three centuries on High Tor, waiting for a ship to take them back to Amsterdam from the dark side of the world.

In a less ambitious feat of imagination, Playwright Anderson has given High Tor a young owner named Van Dorn (Burgess Meredith, who also lives within a couple of rifle shots of the hill). "Van's" problem is to keep High Tor, which a traprock company is eager to buy and gut, and at the same time keep his sweetheart Judy (Phyllis Welch), who thinks he ought to quit living in a cabin, make some money and behave like other people. Their problem is resolved in a wild night during which Van meets a 17th Century Dutch girl named Lise (Peggy Ashcroft); a crooked judge and a traprock official are suspended by the Dutch merrymen in the bucket of one of their own steamshovels; arid three youthful bank robbers play hide-&-seek with the Law.

Packed with more downright charm and fun than any other show on Broadway, High Tor droops only occasionally when Miss Ashcroft or an incidental Indian has to declaim some of Playwright Anderson's indefatigable verse. As to acting, more important theft than the stage bank robbery is Actor Charles D. Brown's outright steal of the whole show in the part of De Witt, the oldest and saltiest Dutchman. For years cast as a theatrical cop or robber, Actor Brown comes into his own at last when, in pantaloons and a huge hat, he comes to grips with the 20th Century in the shape of a zipper bag full of money and a paper bag full of sandwiches.

The Eternal Road (words & music by Franz Werfel & Kurt Weill; Meyer W. Weisgal, Crosby Gaige, and Max Reinhardt, producers) is perhaps the first indoor theatrical event ever to justify the cinematic adjectives Stupendous and Colossal. Everything about this unprecedented superspectacle is large scale. It was more than three years in the making. Its premiere, postponed ten times, finally took place one year and 15 days late. The heart-breaking difficulties which beset its promoters were scarcely less impressive than those of the Jewish people whose historic sorrows the pageant so magnificently pictures.

In the fall of 1933 Meyer Weisgal, "a Zionist since his first shave" and one-time secretary of the Zionist Organization of America, sought out Director Reinhardt in Paris and proposed to produce in Manhattan a Biblical superspectacle "that would also constitute a stirring commentary on current events." It would provide a symbol of solidarity around which to rally world Jewry to the defense of fellow Jews suffering the lash of Nazi persecution. Director Reinhardt, who had his huge indoor Miracle ten years behind him, his huge outdoor A Midsummer Night's Dream one year in the future, agreed to take on the job. He called in Novelist Werfel, who was completing his best-selling Forty Days of Musa Dagh, to do the book. He called in Composer Weill, who had finished his music for Dreigroschenoper but had not yet dreamed of Johnny Johnson, to score the spectacle. Designer Norman Bel Geddes, long finished with Lysistrata but not yet started on Dead End, was hired to set the spectacle. Of all the episodes in The Eternal Road's tortuous history, those concerning its scenery are the most prodigious and painful. Director Reinhardt and Producer Weisgal originally conceived their show as occupying its own specially constructed tabernacle with a cast of 3,000. This paranoiac aspiration did not quite come true, but Mr. Weisgal did rent from the Scottish Rite the vast old Manhattan Opera House around the corner from the Pennsylvania Station. Mr. Bel Geddes began to tear out the theatre's interior, a cast of 220 began rehearsing and the premiere was set for Dec. 23, 1935. First thing that happened was that the stage required costly reinforcement with steel beams. It then became necessary to excavate beneath the stage to build a place to move Mr. Bel Geddes' great blocks of scenery. The stage was built on solid rock.

Not only was the expense of digging it out terrific, but diggers hit a well which flooded the basement dressing rooms. On Feb. 10, 1936 the show went broke, rehearsals were temporarily abandoned. The backers -- rich and loyal Jews like Presi dent Maurice Levin of Hearn's, President Alfred A. Strelsin of Reliance Advertising Co., Banker Felix M. Warburg, Publisher Eugene Meyer of the Washington Post-- had already put up $250,000, were unable or unwilling to continue bearing the full financial responsibility.

But Meyer Weisgal, who had already put on in Chicago, Manhattan, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Detroit a pageant called The Romance of a People to raise funds for Jewish charity, persisted. He eventually got another $213,000 and Eternal Road rehearsals resumed Nov. 29, 1936. There were three more postponements before the greatest night in a generation for New York's Jews at last arrived. With Sara Delano Roosevelt representing the Gentiles and Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise at the head of his flock, the lights went down.

The Eternal Road begins in the depths of an ancient musty synagogue, somewhere in central Europe, some time in the Dark Ages. A terrified congregation has fled there for protection from their Aryan neighbors. To comfort and strengthen them the rabbi and his elders bring out the Scroll of the Law from the Ark and begin singing the history of their melodramatic race.

There are many breath-taking scenic experiences in The Eternal Road, but none equals the initial one in which Abraham, having ascended a mountain some 50 ft. high and as far to the rear of the stage's front apron, lays Isaac on a stone altar and is prevented from slaying him only by the sudden intercession of the Heavenly Host. The latter consists of rows of angels banked 60 ft. higher and seeming to reach out of sight. Coiling up and down tne heights and planes and depths of the amazing Bel Geddes stage, the legends of Jacob's loss of Rachel, Joseph's dispatch into Egypt. Moses and the fugitive children of Israel, Saul, David and Solomon follow in rich procession, dipping down into the synagogue itself from time to time until the night is over and the congregation is spared slaughter but is exiled and sent once more on the Jews' eternal road.

Most first-nighters were of the opinion that production honors were even between Designer Bel Geddes, for the magic of his lighting and setting, and Director Reinhardt, for his skill in effectively sweeping the great crowds and actors over the vast stage. Sam Jaffe as the eternal Jewish cynic, Rosamond Pinchot as Bathsheba, Catherine Carrington as Ruth made themselves recognizable among the mobs of fellow-actors. Heard of but not recognized by many was pretty Florence Meyer, Backer Meyer's daughter, as an Egyptian princess, a fiend, a depraved woman.

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