The Theater: New Plays in Manhattan, Nov. 7, 1955

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As a play, The Desk Set, after a reasonably bright start, goes steadily downhill by really going nowhere at all. As a feed-box for Shirley Booth, there is more to be said for it. She has seldom been better at the rueful smile or the sugar-coated sting. It would be inaccurate to say that in The Desk Set she does everything but recite Hiawatha, because she does recite Hiawatha. She also recites, in jive rhythm, Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight. She floors an efficiency expert with her knowledge, she has a laughing fit, she has a drinking scene. Again and again she says practically nothing and makes it seem funny. She almost, but not quite, renders the playwright's job superfluous.

Deadfall (by Leonard Lee) is a murder yarn in which what is really murdered is a bright idea. A woman's husband is killed; when the man tried for the crime is acquitted, the woman—certain that he is guilty—vows vengeance. She assumes a new name and an on-the-town personality, gets to know the acquitted man, frames him for the "murder" of her fictitious self.

Deadfall's first blunder is to show all this at the outset, so that the second, or courtroom, half of the evening merely drives in the coffin nails. There is no suspense and—a second serious error—no final twist that might help save the day. Among other blunders, the writing is studiously mediocre.