New Plays in Manhattan

Margin for Error (by Clare Boothe; produced by Richard Aldrich & Richard Myers) breaks the jinx on anti-Nazi plays (five in a row flopped last season) by breaking the mold. Playwright Boothe makes everything Nazi-totsy by shifting her scene to the U. S., turning her tale into a lively mystery melodrama, and peppering it with wisecracks like those in The Women and Kiss the Boys Goodbye.

Laid in the German consulate of "an American city," Margin for Error dishes up a consul (admirably played by Otto L. Preminger) who--to go easy on him--steals, lies, blackmails, double-crosses and is all ready for murder. It requires, indeed, a whole act to take inventory of his villainies and when, at the end of the act, he is found dead, practically everybody in the cast has a dozen splendid reasons for being glad.

The sleuthing that follows takes a different and amusing turn. A Jewish cop (Sam Levene), who has been appointed by a prankish mayor to guard the consul, sees that he is in a tight place. Unless the murderer is caught at once, all the Jews in the Reich will suffer because Officer Finkelstein failed to prevent the murder. Half by bludgeoning, half by clowning, Officer Finkelstein gets the mystery solved.

When Margin for Error was having its pre-Broadway tryout in Washington, the German Embassy obligingly gave it free publicity by protesting to Secretary Hull that the play was "derogatory" to the Reich. But, though the Nazi Consul is hardly a Chevalier Bayard, and Hitlerism is scarcely recommended to U. S. audiences, Margin for Error is much less propaganda than entertainment. At its best it is both: somebody asks, "What would Hitler say if he found out that his mother was Jewish?", is answered, "He would say he's Jesus."

Pastoral (by Victor Wolfson; produced by Bonfils & Somnes). Opened by mistake.

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