The Theatre: The Best Plays: Dec. 29, 1924

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

Drama

THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED —The Italian grape-grower of California who summons by mail a wife to grace his rural opulence. But he had white hair, while his hired man was young and handsome. Pauline Lord obliges with the greatest performance of the season.

S. S. GLENCAIRN—The Eugene O'Neill cycle of one-act plays moved up from Greenwich Village. Powerful primitives of our first dramatist.

WHITE CARGO—Eight companies are explaining to the U. S. and England just what happens to a white man who lives too long among the blacks of Africa.

SILENCE—The old crook contrivances rearranged to make a taut evening. H. B. Warner is the man who escapes the electric chair.

DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS—One young bride, one old husband, his grown son. All this cut from New England flint by the biting edges of Eugene O'Neill's dramatic implements.

CONSCIENCE—Prominent for the poignant performance of the hitherto unknown Lillian Foster. Returning from jail, the husband finds his wife reduced, through poverty, to prostitution.

WHAT PRICE GLORY?—Stripping war of its medals and mockery. All the ironic bitterness of the muddy fronts of France in flawless production and performance.

Comedy

THE SHOW-OFF—The only worth-while comedy survival of the past season. A man who believes that words speak louder than actions.

GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE—The incisive, yet elusive, personality of Ina Claire in a Continental comedy of divorce and domesticity.

THE FARMER'S WIFE—Certain hilarious experiments by a farmer-widower in persuading almost any one of his eligible acquaintances to be his bride.

MINICK—America, middle class. The grinding jealousy of little things when an old man comes to live with his daughter's family. THE

FIREBRAND—Gaudy irreverence toward the days and nights of Benvenuto Cellini, famed and garrulous goldsmith.

QUARANTINE—Reviewed in this issue.

Musical

From the lists of levity and song the following selections are counted steady winners: Lady, Be Good; Ziegfeld Follies, Dixie to Broadway, Kid Boots, I'll Say She Is, Rose Marie, The Grab Bag, The Music Box Revue.