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Music Box Revue. Down in the dingy dance halls of the Bowery there lived and made his living a certain waiter. Between trays of beer he stepped to the smoky center of the floor and sang ballads of the day. Some inner impulse set him to fingering the yellow keys of the piano. He manufactured tunes. The strummer-boy era was just opening. He manufactured Alexander's Ragtime Band and put aside his trays of beer. Last winter, he manufactured What'II I Do, to many the most appealing popular song ever written. Last week, he produced The Music Box Revue, called by Alexander Woollcott the greatest he has ever seen. Who is this singing waiter? Who but Irving Berlin?
Detailing a revue is like explaining why the Henderson's dinner was good or bad. There are always the customary courses. In the Music Box, the quality is inevitably excellent, the chefs competent and the distributors expensive. The outcome is this year, as usual, a tidy and entertaining feast.
A scene of waving fans against a black velvet background, an Alice in Wonderland interlude, a live bear, a shift of lights which turns the cast from white to black, the pantomime of a ballet dancer's home, Fannie Brice, Grace Moore, Bobby Clark, Oscar Shaw, Ula Sharon are in the picture. The music of the erstwhile waiter is the light that lightens it.
Badges. To a nation of puzzle-probers, this ingeniously deceptive combination should obtain an ample hearing. To unweave the plot before your eyes would require several assistants from the circulation department and a committee of subscribers to appear and certify that the narrative implements are without trickery. Therefore let it be said that detectives, stolen bonds, an accused woman, some terrible crooks, shots in the dark and all the rest of the black devices of the melodramatists are in action. Tempered with a fine supply of humor, the proceedings should suffice to interest all but the hardest hearted. Chiefly responsible is the amiably helpless Gregory Kelly. The halting awkwardness, the small cracked voice and all the multiplication of mannerisms he employed in Seventeen are pleasantly in evidence. He plays the graduate of a correspondence school for detectives. Does he find the bonds? Did you ever hear of a correspondence school detective on the stage who didn't?
Percy Hammond—"Another of those trick melodramas with a trick bottom."
Paolo and Francesca. Stephen Phillips, late master of prose and blank-verse, is probably much better beneath the library lamp than he is in the harsh white spotlight of production. This poetic version of the old, old story enlisted the activities of some of the best of our players, was mounted in discerning luxury and presented to the population for special matinees. It dragged.
Old brother Giovanni marries lovely Francesca. Young brother Paolo falls in love with her. With all due tragedy the lovers finally die. Claude King made rather a cardboard character of big brother. Little brother Paolo glowed under the touch of Morgan Farley but never quite caught fire. Phyllis Povah was miscast. Helen Ware as the acid confidant of old brother gave the most complete interpretation.