The Theatre: Best Plays: Sorceress Meller

These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important.

SERIOUS

CRAIG'S WIFE — A sharply etched portrait of a woman whose house became a shrine and not a home.

THE DYBBUK — Jewish legend and mysticism in a brilliantly executed production at the tiny Neighborhood Playhouse.

BRIDE OF THE LAMB — Alice Brady in a stirring, shocking play about the mixture of religion and sex.

YOUNG WOODLEY — Glenn Hunter and an adept troupe discussing an English schoolboy's earliest love affair.

LULU BELLE — Merimee's Carmen done over for a Harlem Negro courtesan. Principally Lenore Ulric.

WHITE CARGO— The old favorite, White Men melting morally under the African sun, returning for a spring engagement.

THE GREAT GOD BROWN — Eugene O'Neill's strange mingling of brilliance and obscurity in a play about a man who borrowed another's brains.

CYRANO DE BERGERAC — Walter Hampden's excellent revival of the French classic about a lover with a big nose.

LESS SERIOUS

THE LAST OF MRS. CHEYNEY — Ina Claire and her English assistants still entertaining agreeably in the genial history of stolen pearls.

WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS— Reviewed in this issue.

CRADLE SNATCHERS—A bawdy tale of old women and young men, which seems to amuse almost everybody.

MUSICAL

Tired business women and big butter and egg men generally go to these: The Vagabond King, Sunny, The Cocoanuts, The Student Prince, Pinafore, Tip-Toes, Artists and Models, By the Way and No, No, Nanette.

Sorceress Meller

Her Hands Are Like Faces

A Manhattan theatreful of the East's leading fad-connoisseurs fell into expensive hush, breathlessly hoping that all they had heard from Americanos lately abroad was even partly true. Glad tidings had come from widest sources; from jaded novelists and strong-minded grandmothers, from callow collegians and a onetime U. S. foreign ambassador, who had circulated verses that were but feebly expressive of the ecstasy that called them forth. The evening had even been signalized by a cable from the King of Spain—his thanks in advance for America's "homage to Spanish art."

Ushers with tall combs and white mantillas stole back up the aisles as the house lights faded out. The orchestra blared some opening bars, then hushed to a faintly drumming vamp. Into a pool of amber light on the empty stage, stepped a small woman with hair of jet, a stocky little figure in velvet flounces, with a broad, flat face of extraordinary mobility. Her black eyes grew slowly wider and deeper as a spattering storm of applause burst upon her, swelled and rumbled with calls of "Brava! Brava!" which took five minutes to blow over.