Ethel Barrymore is not one to take vacations. At the close of the Players' Club's The School for Scandal, " America's greatest actress " betook herself to Washington to open a summer vaudeville tour in Barrie's The Twelve Pound Look. Miss Barrymore will probably go on tour in the autumn in repertory under the management of Author Hopkins.
Those who seek body to the wine of their amusement are scanning with some interest the program of the Theatre Guild for the coming season:
1) Windows, by John Galsworthy. "A comedy for idealists and others."
2) The Failures, an adaptation from H. R. Tenormand's tragedy, Les Rates. Jacob Ben Ami will have the lead.
3) The Guardsman, by Franz Molnar.
4) Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra.
5) Masse Mensch, by Ernst Teller.
6) Rudolph Schildkraut in King Lear.
7) An American play as yet unselected.
Tentative plans also indicate the production of The Goat Song, a drama of Pan-worship, by Franz Werfel; Fata Morgana, by Ernst Vajda; and a second American play.
Contracts have been signed for the construction of the world's greatest indoor arena just above the Manhattan theatre district (at 51st St. and Seventh Ave.). John Ringling, circus man; Tex Rickard, greatest of athletic promoters; E. F. Albee, czar of vaudeville, are behind the project. The building will include at least two theatres beside the arena, and will seat untold thousands. In the summertime the tan l ark will evolve into a swimming pool than which " only the ocean is larger." The announcement spells death to historic Madison Square Garden, for years home of circus, bike race, title bout.
A curious outgrowth of the strolling player idea has cropped up in the Ford Truck tour of New England by the Jitney Players. Headed by Bushnell Cheney, youthful Yale graduate, and his wife, Alice Keating, the group will present Creatures of Impulse, by W. S. Gilbert, and James Branch Cabell's The Jewel Merchants to New England communities throughout the summer. Their stage consists of automatic contrivances built on the body of two Ford trucks. Their season opened at Madison, Conn., July 4.
London has forgotten for the moment the complaint that her stage was overrun with American productions and has turned to welcome the cardinal artists of the Italian and French theatres. Eleanora Duse, who has been quoted by London correspondents as more than meditating on an American tour, is giving Tuesday and Thursday matinees at the New Oxford theatre to packed stalls. Ibsen forms the backbone of her repertory. Dividing the honors are Lucien and Sacha Guitry, assisted by the latter's wife, Yvonne Printemps. The Times concludes an extended eulogy of this distinguished trio with the comment: " Well, we have the Guitrys to set against the Ruhr."