New Plays in Manhattan

Excursion (by Victor Wolfson; John C. Wilson, producer) is the log of the S. S. Happiness, Obediah Rich, commanding. He and his vessel had grown old together and were both soon to be decommissioned. So he summoned his elder brother down from Yarmouth, got his passengers aboard, tooted his whistle and on a fine Sunday morning, with the sun high in the sky, Obediah (Whitford Kane) and the Happiness set out for their last cruise from Manhattan's 125th Street to Coney Island.

By the time the Happiness had returned to her pier on opening night, Excursion, a comedy compassionate, tender and wise, had taken its place among the stage's rarer offerings, was being compared with that other notable maritime drama, Outward Bound. For by the beginning of Act II-- when Obediah and his brother look out on benighted, garish Coney Island and pity the people who so desperately depend on such a place for their fleeting, unfufilling recreation--Excursion begins to take on a modest significance. Why not, says Obediah's slightly pixillated Brother Jonathan, take this doomed little ship and her doomed company and sail for southern seas? He has a map of a fine Caribbean island he discovered when he was in the China trade. Why not rescue these poor people out of the chains of their industrial civilization, place them in the Eden they vainly seek each Sunday on the Happiness bound for Coney?

How the ship's heterogeneous company --the girls from Gimbel's, the owner's radical daughter and conservative son, the exhausted Jews, the adulterous Irish--take or reject Obediah's offer of escape, how they react to the sudden necessity of facing their inmost problems, is a situation ably handled by Dramatist Wolfson. Hitherto known as an adapter of Left propaganda plays, in Excursion he exhibits a notable capacity for original characterization and narrative. Without sacrificing any of his play's moral values, he manages to bring the Happiness back into New York Harbor after a wild night off Sandy Hook with a small victory for everybody concerned.

To fatherly Actor Kane, to Author Wolfson, to Director Worthington Miner, to Producer Wilson (on his own for the first time without Noel Coward) and to a large, excellent and largely indistinguishable cast went critical acclaim unusual for the spring or any other part of the season.

Hitch Your Wagon (by Bernard C. Schoenfeld; Pearson & Baruch, producers). Night of this comedy's Washington try-out opening, the theatre manager received the following telegram from a Hollywood lawyer named Henry C. Huntington: "From report it appears Hitch Your Wagon burlesques my client Barrymore as well as Elaine Barrie. I hereby warn you that I will hold you strictly responsible, if this play is produced, on behalf of my client."

Hitch Your Wagon's first scene exhibits Rex Duncan (George Curzon), a onetime stage idol who has gone somewhat to pot in Hollywood, having the jitters in a Manhattan sanatorium where his agent (Joseph Sweeney) has placed him because of alcoholic excesses. A shapely young admirer comes in bringing a gift of noodle soup. She turns out to be one Camille Schwartz (Dennie Moore), encouraged to visit Duncan by a stage-struck mother. The actor is charmed by Camille's naive allusions to her simple, bourgeois life, even more fascinated when she deprecates his film appearances but admires his acting on the stage years ago. Having obtained her address, Duncan gets a bottle of whiskey and a hat and coat which he puts on over his pajamas, escapes from the sanatorium, appears at the Schwartzes' gloriously tight. He is received with enthusiasm by Camille find her mother.

While his disappearance is the subject bf frantic New York-to-Hollywood telephone calls, Duncan luxuriates in the simple life at the Schwartzes', drinking water instead of whiskey before breakfast and sleeping in a daybed with Papa Schwartz. When Camille misapprehends the purpose of his lovemaking, he finds himself engaged to her. His extrication and the return of Camille to the husky footballer who really loves her provide further complications which, although not unfalteringly hilarious, disclose an unexpected flair for swashbuckling satire on the part of reedy Actor George Curzon, who last year played a somewhat insipid Parnell in Parmil, an unpleasant maniac in Black Limelight. Apparently no more actionable than a last year's film (Sing, Baby, Sing) along the same story lines, Hitch Your Wagon would probably seem to such an experienced theatre man as John Barrymore rather less amusing.

Miss Quis (by Ward Morehouse; Vinton Freedley, producer). Liz Quis (Peggy Wood) is a worn spinster who does housework for most of Fancy Gap's prominent townsfolk, including fiery old Colonel Selby, veteran Indian fighter. The Colonel has a great love for Fancy Gap, hates the other leading citizens' pettiness and rapacity, which he believes to be handicapping the progress of his town. When he dies, knowing that Miss Quis shares his feelings, he leaves her his mansion and his fortune, hoping she will be able to get rid of the undesirables. Armed with a sheaf of damaging evidence against them, she offers to buy out their businesses if they will leave town. Her only friend, an amiable gambler named Buster Niles (James Rennie), knocks down and fatally injures a man who accuses him of sleeping with Miss Quis. This gives her enemies a chance to get back at her by editing their testimony at Niles's trial, but she buys them off by doubling her offers and Niles goes free with a suspended sentence for manslaughter. In the autumn he goes back to propose marriage, but he has been forbidden to live in the town and Miss Quis feels too deeply rooted to leave it.

Ward Morehouse, a Broadway reporter for the New York Sun, once wrote a play called Gentlemen of the Press. Like many another play concocted by a writer whose chief writing is outside the theatre, this one has discursive charm, not much dramatic impact.

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