The Humble. In reproving contrast to The Noose (see below) stands a play fashioned from Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment. Herein a Russian student is goaded to murder by what he considers a rational motive: to rid the world of a monster. His tortured philosophy fails to comprehend the final principle of rational thought, "the law that there shall be law." The story-teller fastens upon the young man's soul, wrings it, twists it, wracks it, as only a Russian can, or would. The play follows the novel's torments through hours of merciless misery. That U. S. audiences, not much given to the relish of agony, now acclaim The Humble enthusiastically, is tribute to the staging of Bertram Forsythe and the acting of a remarkable cast. As the central character, Basil Sydney maintains unflinching devotion to a cruel role.
Daisy Mayme. George Kelly became a playwright on the vaudeville circuit. At one time it was his business to fashion single act skits for the two-a-day. In doing so, he studied homely characters, setting them into homely situations, for the amusement of audiences that generally failed to appreciate the unobtrusive irony of the whole. His real genius, then as now, lay in a faculty for etching characters with acidic dialogue. The Torch Bearers, The Show-off Craig's Wife, have established him as playwright-director, have also established Rosalie Stewart, first to appreciate his genius, as one of Broadway's successful producers. Now Daisy Mayme, probably the playwright's best effort, has settled down to a successful Kelly run.