The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, Dec. 13, 1943

Lovers and Friends (by Dodie Smith, produced by Katharine Cornell and John C. Wilson) is Katharine Cornell and Raymond Massey adroitly wasting their time on a tedious drawing-room comedy of English puppet love. Dodie Smith, who in Autumn Crocus and Call It a Day wrote agreeable matinee folderol, in Lovers and Friends has worked out one of the oldest problems in sexual geometry on a theatrical abacus.

In the spring of 1918 Miss Cornell and Mr. Massey fall in love and marry. In the summer of 1930 Mr. Massey menaces their happiness by wanting to marry another woman. In the fall of 1930 Mr. Massey has stopped wanting to marry her, but Miss Cornell wants to marry another man. In the spring of 1942 Miss Cornell and Mr. Massey, still married, have a quiet laugh at their onetime nonsense.