The Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Mar. 16, 1931

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Give Me Yesterday. Upon entering Producer Charles Hopkins' theatre, one must always tread lightly for fear of shattering some delicate fantasy. Having moved the ephemeral Mrs. Moonlight to another playhouse, last week Producer Hopkins presented Alan Alexander Milne's Give Me Yesterday, produced in London in 1923, by the Harvard Dramatic Club in 1929, called Success until a few days before its New York premiere. It relates the pastel-tinted tale of the Rt. Hon. R. Selby Mannock, M. P. (Louis Calhern), who has decided that the world is too much with him, that it would be better to chuck everything and return to the irresponsible life of childhood.

On a speaking tour he stops at the house of Sally, his oldtime sweetheart. There, in her bedroom, the play ducks into the Christmas Carol motif. First he sees three children — himself, Sally and a playmate. But when he tries to play with the children, other people interfere, the figures of his mature life intrude, demand speeches, advance fragments of his own mouthings.

Increasing, the interlopers march around him, present him with robes of office, shut Sally away. When the illusion has passed, the politician decides to give up his post, but the Prime Minister replies by making him Chancellor of the Exchequer. Success, the fruit of 20 years of diplomacy, has him tightly bottled and corked.

No one can develop a Milne play like Mr. Hopkins. His deft hand is always there to give a push where the fragile dramatic fabric can stand it, to give gentle support where the stuff is sheer. Actor Calhern, having owed himself a good performance since his appearance in The Tyrant, makes a splendid baffled member of Parliament. If you can stand whimsy in stiff doses, Give Me Yesterday is recommended.

As Husbands Go. Every time one enters Producer John Golden's theatre one can be sure of seeing a show made out of good solid, substantial stuff, with a dash of sympathetic humor. Mr. Golden's latest divertissement, As Husbands Go, is by Rachel Crothers, who has been writing plays for 27 years and has never yet lost a female character's honor. Her present piece is no exception, although for a time it looked as though Lucile Lingard (Lily Cahill), who found romance and a young English poet while visiting Europe, might let Miss Crothers down. But when Lucile, and later the poet, return to the solidarity of the homeland, and when Lucile's husband so patently demonstrates his "great, selfless love," the affair subsides.

The farcical elements in Miss Crothers' play are better than the dramatic and comic. As Husbands Go has one excellent character, Lucile's crackbrained, ridiculously indiscreet friend (Catherine Doucet). When told that Mr. Lingard and the poet have become horribly drunk together, she says complacently: "Well, I know— but they're just men."

Privilege Car. The scene of this play is laid in the lunch counter of a circus train; the characters are all circus folk. Authors are Willard Keefe (Celebrity) and Edward J. Foran, longtime follower of the tanbark trail. Like any circus, their lively melodramatic comedy contains such a plethora of activity that even the most interested customer is unable to take it all in at once. The Colton & Steel tent show may be going broke, but it is certainly not stagnating.