Full-length Skinner

Edna His Wife (adapted by Cornelia Otis Skinner from the novel by Margaret Ayer Barnes; produced and acted by Miss Skinner). Given 30 seconds to change her costume, makeup and wig, Cornelia Otis Skinner can be all things to all men. In the past she has specialized in monologues and short solo-dramas (The Wives of Henry VIII; The Loves of Charles II). Now she appears in her first full-length play. As usual, she is singlehanded.

The heroine of Author Barnes's bestseller, which Miss Skinner tailored to fit herselves, is a girl who marries the wrong man. In 1900 Edna was a small-town blonde, a frontporch girl. In 1937 she is white-haired and miserable in the luxury of a New York penthouse. Reason: she jilted the simple-hearted brakeman who loved her for an ambitious young lawyer who loved success.

The characters in this bromidic fable are superficial, the emotional appeal obvious. There are coy references to the hectic speed of the bicycle era and red flannel underwear, but Miss Skinner almost atones for these commonplaces by the varied distinction of her acting. Not only does she play Edna at crucial stages of her life, she impersonates seven other characters besides. Broadly caricatured and really funny is her dowager Dolly McElroy, millionaire wife of a Chicago meat packer, who welcomes Edna's husband into pre-War society among potted palms and ottomans. As Edna's sister on the deck of the doomed excursion boat, Eastland, Miss Skinner is at her best. Although the only stage effect is a swaying rail for her to clutch, she projects the full horror of the sinking ship. Later, as a sculptress who is Edna's husband's mistress, she contributes a sympathetic, plausible portrait that helps to save the story from bathos.

In spite of, or because of the fact that Miss Skinner is the hardest-worked actress now playing on Broadway, her entertainment has a large element of stunt-appeal. Theatregoers tell each other how wonderful it is that she can do it all alone. Edna His Wife is also a fascinating guessing-game. Only by inference from the spoken lines can the audience know what the invisible characters are supposed to be saying. Thanks to Miss Skinner's powers of suggestion, Edna's husband, who never appears, seems as real as any person in the play.

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