Theatre: New Plays: Mar. 2, 1925

Cape Smoke. Since White Cargo has run over 500 performances and has been sued for plagiarism, the necessity of an imitation was obvious. This new African adventure is a good deal louder than White Cargo and a lot funnier. Most of the laughter is at it.

It starts off stoutly enough with a fearful kaffir curse by which three Englishmen and an American are to die. The British mortality is high by the ending act, but the American, naturally, survives. If they do it in London— which they will not—the three-in-one nationalities must be shuffled.

Before all three acts are over, there is probably more off and on stage clamor than is contained in any given dozen of theatres. Storms and shots and beaten drums fill in the open spaces when an Englishman's soul is not departing with appropriate agonies. James Rennie and Ruth Shepley draw salaries for interpreting these noisy doings. Probably the best performance is that of the witch doctor, Francis Corbie, a Negro actor.

Percy Hammond—"A good, gaudy hair-raiser for two acts— the rest is Glostora or it may be Stacomb."*

Houses of Sand borrowed all it could from Madame Butterfly, including soft off-stage harmonies, and failed to repay the loan. It added certain novelties from which the edge was worn by unreality. The twist awards the Japanese heroine to the American hero (unknown to him, his mother was a Jap girl). Before this sweet solution can release the audience, there are six scenes in and about Manhattan, beginning with the meeting of the chief participants at a Far East bazaar in Forest Hills. The performers were generally apt but the play is apt to end presently in the storehouse.

Percy Hammond—"More suitable to the little ones than to grown-ups."

Ariadne. There is a distinct suspicion among the cynics that, had this piece been produced by anyone else but the Theatre Guild, it would have stumbled and swiftly disappeared. Yet that extraordinary organization has managed to polish it up smartly, cast it astutely and render it, in general, entertaining.

To these ends, they engaged Laura Hope Crews, who gives way to few of our light comediennes. They showed her married to a British business man whose thoughts were ever far away among his ledgers. They showed her annoyance at their resultant domestic doldrums. They showed her escape to a London luncheon with a less worthy but more perceptive character. They showed that this was all a ruse which, divulged discreetly to the husband, proved to him that his wife must, after all, be included in his interests.

The composer of this singularly unoriginal fable was the facile A. A. Milne. His slender and seductive touch for dialog was never needed more. Generally, it was equal to the crisis. Pondering over the entire problem, one can conclude that A. A. Milne, the Theatre Guild and Laura Hope Crews are a trio that has done so many things thoroughly well that anything they do must be of genial consequence.

Stark Young—"Miss Crews . . . makes laughter vindicate good sense and makes us believe that Mr. Milne knows more than he does."

Percy Hammond—"Just another frolic by the Theatre Guild in one of its more anemic moods."