New Plays in Manhattan

The King of Friday's Men (by Michael Molloy; produced by Michael Grace) is about as Irish as plays come--even out of Dublin's famous Abbey Theatre. It is a gaudily romantic period piece about a homely 18th Century shillelagh fighter who turns up in the west of Ireland just as a great landlord is about to seize a pretty young peasant girl for his pleasure. When the girl (Maggie McNamara) pretends love for the brawny shillelagh-swinging Dowd (Walter Macken), he cheerfully whips the landlord's entire press gang. But though Dowd eventually wins the girl's love, the landlord schemes so that he does not win the girl.

A swashbuckling stage piece about the Ireland that ran more to liquor than to leprechauns, The King of Friday's Men has some of the old Irish gift of words, while Dowd has some of the mighty human dimensions of folklore. And Actor Macken, who first played the part at the Abbey, brings real vigor to it, and the smack and caress of Irish speech. But the play's snatches of racy prose do not offset its stretches of lumpish playwriting. Too often both untidy and oldfashioned, it closed after four performances.

The High Ground (by Charlotte Hastings; produced by Albert H. Rosen) would be a better whodunit if it were more of one--if it kept its mind on murder. It has a certain novelty of atmosphere and attack: it tells of a gifted young painter (Leueen MacGrath) who has been condemned to hang for poisoning her brother, and who is forced by floods--while being taken to prison--to spend some time at a convent. A nursing sister (Margaret Webster) has a fierce conviction that the girl is innocent, and works at the case till she finds the right solution.

The solution is passable enough, the setting odd enough, the sleuth different enough, the condemned girl interesting enough for the play to have its points. But it swamps them in high-toned irrelevancy. It insists on becoming emotional, even spiritual. It prefers tear jerking to spine-tingling. It keeps slowing down to exhibit one of those suspicious half-wits that, by now, only another half-wit would suspect. As a whodunit, it suffers partly from not knowing its business, partly from not knowing its place.

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