Ladies in Retirement (by Edward Percy & Reginald Denham; produced by Gilbert Miller) gave Broadway its first real shivers of the season. A good, broad-beamed, solid-walnut English melodrama, it mounts from scene to scene toward a fine, dimly lighted, clock-striking-midnight climax in Act III. Though not the most gory or grisly or ghostly of horror plays, it has what most of them lack: an excellent balance of atmosphere, characterization and plot.
The time is 1885, the scene a farmhouse in the English marshes where aging, rouged Miss Fiske (Isobel Elsom) is enjoying the fruits...