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While Death takes his holiday the flowers in the courtyard cease to wilt and venerable Baron Cesarea makes extravagant and unusual gestures toward the ladies. As for Prince Sirki, he experiences the earthly pleasures which he had anticipated, and a bitterness which he could not have foreseen. For he falls in love with the virginal, tender Grazia and learns of compulsions and sentiments which make him long to remain forever human. On his last evening there is crisis. The girl walks complacently with him into the gardens; the others, who have been told of Prince Sirki's identity by their desperate host, wait forlorn and fearful while what they regard as the dread communion takes place. At length the pair return, and when Sirki tries to frighten Grazia back to mundanity by revealing himself in his habitual cerements, she alone of all the company shows no fear of Death. So he takes her to his realm.
Adapted by Walter Ferris from the Italian of Alberto Casella, this play, displaying the same metaphysically romantic tendency as Berkeley Square (TIME, Nov. 18), neglects the acid philosophizing suggested by its theme for a poetry which is often affecting but tends to become mere rhetorical conversation. Philip Merivale plays with distinction as the sinister vacationist whose entrance provokes more ideas than the play develops. As his eager consort, Rose Hobart would obviously appeal to any reaper, however grim.
Born in Manhattan 24 years ago, Rose Hobart has taken her mother's maiden name. Her father was Paul Kefer, French musician. Her parents separated; when Rose was 12 she went traveling with Chautauqua. She has since supported her mother and sister, making her first stage appearance when 15 (Cappy Ricks), acting with Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre, and in Liliom, The Vortex, Crashing Thru, A Primer for Lovers. She cooks and dressmakes excellently, likes earrings, is a divorcée.
Woof Woof. Topical excitement is supposedly furnished this musicomedy by a whippet race with real, live dogs right on the stage. But since the sportsmen who attend these events get most of their fun from betting, the thrills of the stage contest are questionable. Louise Brown's dancing is a more positive pleasure—one of the very few in an incongruous diversion which mixes up such obvious ballads as "My Sweetie's Sweet On Me" with a ballet danced to Claude Achille Debussy's gossamer "Clair de Lune."
Seven concerns a squadron of U, S. aviators and their successive deaths over the Western Front. Last to survive are the captain and a stripling from Harvard. Because the Harvardian's nerves are shattered, a highborn and loving Frenchwoman offers him the solace of her bed. In the morning the youth learns that the understanding captain has gone alone on a dangerous exploit and follows furiously after him. Because the play is earnest it may keep your attention, but because Playwright Frank J. Collins mixes burlesque and bathos, exhibits all manner of ineptitudes, you are bound to be uncomfortable.
Revival