Theatre: Theatre: Nov. 29, 1926

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Twinkle, Twinkle makes the evening both musical and comic. A cinema actress seeking escape from an annoying, unbusinesslike producer, visits her graceful dancing and tinkling song upon Pleasantville, Kan., where she works as a skimp-skirted waitress. The hero, disguised as a mere reporter, is in reality vice president of a rival film corporation. Love. In the end, everybody marries. The real show is "Peachy" Robinson (Joe E. Brown), rustic Sherlock Holmes. His sleuthing is most unaccountably absurd, occasions a fusillade of wisecracks. Actor Brown's mouth is the dentist's dream. Two human fists can enter here, wiggle around in the spacious cavity. Actor Brown makes full use of his natural asset. Altogether, a better than average entertainment in a season when musical comedy happens to be the thing.

John Gabriel Borkman is a trag-edy of a Napoleon of finance who waited vainly for the world to come to his Elba in a garret, who finally stamped forth rashly to regain love and the world when it was too late. The little pauses between lines, the way an actor paces the room, the tempo of dialogue and movement, make all the difference in play production. To this work of Playwright Ibsen's old age, Miss Le Gallienne has given more careful direction than she has to previous offerings of her Civic Repertory Theatre. Egon Brecher, in the title role, is a picturesque figure, a capable actor. The New York Evening Post: "... at popular—most popular— prices."

A Proud Woman. Playwright Richman starts out to write a "character comedy." The story: a provincial maid, about to wed a wealthy Manhattanite, finds all her hopes, plans, thoughts, poisoned by the arrival of her sister who brings a small-town suspicion to the guileless urbanity of the metropolis. Near the end, the sister's meretricious snooping is smartly smacked down; marriage negotiations are resumed. The "comedy of character" fails to concentrate on one principal character. Little episodes of suspicion are heaped, one upon the other, to build up a mound of irritation, but not a real climax. No single incident is emphasized to give unity and effective emphasis to the plot action. Therefore, till the second half of the last act, the play dawdles along without seizing upon the audience's imagination or sympathy. The Emperor Jones. Eugene O'Neill's play about a Negro whom terror drives from a golden, stolen throne into a ghost-jungle, is being acted again by Charles Gilpin. Theatregoers remember that, after the first season, Actor Gilpin's work was authoritatively acclaimed the finest acting of the year. Evidently the part has palled upon him, for his present work rings hollow, artificial. Yet for those who have never heard the throb of the tom-toms coming nearer, beating louder, ominously, faster, the play will prove a revelation of what can be done with mechanical atmosphere. At the Mayfair Theatre, it is preceded by a one-act satirical comedy, In 1999, William de Mille, author.