Judge — December 1933 — page 12: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ITH openings almost every night and sometimes as many as eight and nine a week, your departmental professor is considering a wire to Washington demanding an extension of the NRA code to apply to his critical self. Having spent a forty- hour week at each one of no less than a dozen different and distinct plays— to say nothing of a two-hundred-and- , or so it felt, at “The School for Husbands’—he is getting a soupgon Commur The only thing that has kept him in his celebrated old- time good humor has been the periodic epiphany of a play or show of enough quality to make critical attendance upon it something of a pleasure. In the midst of the various hack- spiels, there have been several such plays and shows. “As Thousands Cheer,” for example, is a revue so good that you are doing yourself dirt if you don’t see it. Another show that takes rank is the sequel to “Of Thee I Sing,” called “Let "Em Eat Cake,” although it is by no means up to the former, which statement—considering the excellence of the aforesaid former—doesn’t con stitute very serious destructive critic ism. Its first act is excellent stuff; its second grows a little wearying now and then because of the obvious effort of its authors, the talented MM. Kaufman and Ryskind, to be wittier and satiricaler than hell every minute of the time. Their wit becomes so overly insistent, in fact, that one begins to long—during the second slice of the entertainment— for just one relieving and comfortable moment of old-fashioned musical com- edy dulness. Even the Tiller girls or a sentimental mother song wouldn't be unwelcome. But there is so much tight material in the show—so much that is superior to what we are accus- tomed to in most other quarters—that even this minor grousing is probably out of order. Nothing, alas, is perfect in this world, including the dramatic criticisms in Judge. twenty-four we production of Mor- Shairp's “The Green Bay Tree” is something else for you to buy. An intelligently contrived and generall well written play—dealing with a bra € of abnormal males—it is one of the best things that has been brought over from England in some tim has done a satisfactory job in many de- tails, although why he saw fit to edit certain parts of the original manuscript, thus weakening the author's direct in- tent, and why he dug up O. P. Heggie to convert the character of the old Welsh dominie into a stock company Galsworthy actor, I am not one to know. oT N Minute Alibi,” by Anthony tmstrong, is another English importation and, if you go in for detec- tive-murder delicatessen, will probably serve you better than most such dishes —although I confess I do not pose as an authority either on such things or on the tastes of the persons who delight in them. However, some very adroit staging and several first-rate acting performances make the dingus into a theatrical evening that I shall not be so snobbish as to wave aside entirely. “The School For Husbands,” an adap’ tion in rhyme of the Moliére comedy, seems to have tickled the fancy of a number of my critical colleagues (the damned liars, if I'm not mistaken), which is considerably—very consider- ably—more than it did to mine. Harris ce EEPER of the Keys,” by Valen- tine Davies out of Earl Derr Biggers, struck your hired man as tripe, whether of its own species or any other. And the tripiness wasn’t mitigated by casting that good old Mick, William Harrigan, descendant of Ned Harrigan (of Harrigan and Hart), that noble son of the Ould Sod, as a Chinaman. “Champagne, Sec” was “Die Fleder- maus” of blessed memory under a new name but with the same old goodgod book. The Messrs. Child and Simon did what they could to put a little life 10 THEATRE of George Jean Nathan into the corpse but to small avail. All that remained to the evening were the lovely Strauss melodies. As for “The Curtain Rises,” by B. M. Kaye, let it be recorded that Miss Jean Arthur is a very pretty girl and let the occasion go at that. (All the other critical profes- sors, too, fell for that black velvet skirt and white silk shirtwaist.) LARE KUMMER presents diffi- culties to the critic. Her plays fall definitely into one of two cata- logues: either they are positively good or positively bad. There is no half- y quality about them, as with certain aywrights. In addition, whether J, they are comedy bubble light little floating things—that pretty well defy description in critical type, or close analysis. Any attempt at either omehow sounds, upon reading, just a little gratuitous and foolish. About all the critic can do about them is to say that he likes them or doesn't like them mere brief statement of personal opinion unsupported by the customary and due monkeyshines of critical ratio- cination. Perhaps a few of the now stereotyped phrases about the lady’s graceful, elliptical writing to save his face, but little else. So let it be re- corded, simply, with the usual phrases taken for granted, that “Her Master's Voice” is a good Clare Kummer com- edy, one of the very best, in fact, that she has contrived and that it is acted to perfection by Laura Hope Crews, Roland Young, Frederick Perry, Eliz- abeth Patterson and Frances Also that it has been expertly produced, under the Max Gordon aegis, by Worthington Minor. 6 PRING in Autumn,” adapted from the Spanish of Sierra, was put on as a histrionic beanfeast for the Mlle. Blanche Yurka, was produced by a gentleman who labored under various misapprehensions, including the belief that Spanish evening jackets for men are identical with those worn by bull- (Page 27, please) comicbooks.com