The Theatre: New Plays: Dec. 24, 1923

• Share

The Business Widow. Concentrate for a moment on this title. Does not the image of a lovely wife, pining at home for the affection which an impercipient husband had diverted to his bills and invoices, immediately arise? And does not memory distinctly stir with recollection of numerous encounters with this problem in the Theatre? It does and it has. Furthermore, the wife follows dramatic tradition slavishly by winning him back with jealousy. The possibilities of this plot petered out some time ago. To rejuvenate it some ingenious genius was required to put his brains upon the rack. Unhappily the German authors and the American adapter seem to have foregone this necessary process. Their play falls, therefore, into the vast field of inconsiderable amusement. It has its bright lines; yet all lines that glitter are not necessarily dramatic gold.

The important feature of the proceedings is the joint presence of Leo Ditrichstein and Lola Fisher. Mr. Ditrichstein has forsaken for the nonce his vast capacity for random love affairs and settled down to a display of his considerable talent as a human being of normal impulses. Regarding Miss Fisher, there is virtually nothing to say. Somebody once said he didn't like her. He wasn't even put under observation. He was buried the next day at noon.

Heywood Broun: "Nothing more than one of the thousand and one modern versions of The Taming of the Shrew."