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In the last act, neither son nor daughter-in-law, two central characters, appears on the stage. An irrelevant, unconvincing decision on the part of "Nifty's" woman (the hula dancer) to commit suicide is dragged in to give the play a last shove on its way to an unsatisfactory conclusion. Finally, a postal card arrives from Chicago, announcing that the erring son is working steadily in a law office and' the snake-charmer wife is dancing in a night club for their mutual support. The gods permit life to be as scattered as that, but not art. The last act absence of Lou of the Reptiles, serves, however, to emphasize the excellence of Claudette Colbert who enacts that role. Walter Huston ("Nifty") does nobly by the stern phases of the barker's character, but fails to discover in his part the essential exuberance of sham to which the lines point. For all that, the tense emotion, fascinating atmosphere, curious vernacular of the dialogue lend Playwright Nicholson's creation a sure magic.
Damn the Tears attempts to dramatize the musings of a man out of tune with the world. In college he fails to play baseball according to the rules governing other athletes. In life he finds the same maladjustment. Eleven scenes describe his mental odyssey, taking him through school, sanatorium, streetcorner, deserted room, and finally to salvation, which is achieved in a dream of celestial music and maidenhood. In staging the conjurings of this queer mind, the dramatist employs a queer technique peculiar to the individual out of whom the drama grows. The result is erotic expression of eroticism, or, more simply, insanity.
Where's Your Husband? Herein it happens that Husband has just stamped away from home in high dudgeon, as Aunt and Uncle from Gloucester drop in for a visit. The idea is to find a substitute husband, to prove that family life in the household is all it should be to deserve Uncle's promised $50,000 bequest. Instead of one substitute husband, the little wife happens to acquire two. What a rolling under and from under beds goes on thereafter! It is so extremely agitated, raucous, whirligigish, that the only recourse is to shut the eyes and plug the ears every few minutes for tragic relief. What is thereby missed matters not at all.
The Virgin Man is a "New Haven boy" whom three beauteous, unscrupulous women would seduce in their own homes. The smut is not clever enough.
Lady Alone. Since The Bride of the Lamb (TIME, Apr. 12) Alice Brady's role has been One Actress in Search of a Play. She tried Vincent Lawrence's Sour Grapes with scant success, The Witch with less and now Lady Alone with none at all. In her latest vehicle, she is a charmer who unwisely ravishes a married man. He, after tossing away his fortune to obtain a divorce from a wife five years absent from his hearth, goes to Africa to kill tigers. Because his freedom was won for the beasts of the jungle rather than for her companionship, Nina (Alice Brady) takes an overdose of sleeping potion, lies dead in the sight of the audience through three curtain calls. The play does not have the excuse of being written by a gay sophomore who had unexpectedly gone sublime with a glimpse of life's irony.