Theatre: New Plays in Manhattan: Oct. 12, 1936

Night Must Fall (by Emlyn Williams; Sam H. Harris, producer) is a taut, slick study in psychopathic homicide, imported from London after a 55-week run there. In a prologue, a judge denies the appeal of a man convicted of two atrocious murders, whose reenactment then follows. Act I discloses the lonely Essex household of Mrs. Bramson (May Whitty), a querulous, malingering old lady who keeps in genteel British bondage her penniless and emotionally suffocated niece Olivia (Angela Baddeley). When the maid complains of pregnancy and her seducer is called on the...

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