New Plays in Manhattan

Wise Tomorrow* (by Stephen Powys; produced by Bernard Klawans). Tucked into programs at Wise Tomorrow's, opening was a printed enclosure: "Miss Barrett's limp is due to a sprained ankle." Long before 11 o'clock the play had developed other limps much more pronounced than Miss Barrett's and not so easily explained away. With an infirm grip on the unlovely figure of Lesbianism, novice British Playwright Powys had dragged it through three bumpy acts, upsetting the lives of an abashed cast and sending Manhattan first-nighters out into the October air looking gloomy and underfed.

The play brings a successful young actress (Gloria Dickson) under the vampirish influence of a fading harridan of the theatre (Josephine Victor). How the aging harpy enslaves the girl, breaks up her engagement, holds her captive even after death, is the rest of the sad story. Redhaired, ingratiating Theodore Newton (Dead End), appeared as the luckless suitor, tries in vain to better matters with dignified restraint. Gloria Dickson, the Pocatello, Idaho girl who stepped from the Federal Theatre into Hollywood fame (They Won't Forget), endowed the young actress with dazzling blondness and a fresh, strong prairie accent. As her sister, Edith Barrett, despite the limp and a tendency to Fletcherize her lines, turned in the best performance.

When bad plays reach Broadway it is usually through the blind openhandedness of some gullible angel, but this one had the Hollywood backing of the astute Warner Brothers, was one more indication of Hollywood's renewed interest in the Broadway stage as a source, albeit an inconsistent one, of script material.

* Withdrawn after three performances.

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