Theater: New Plays in Manhattan: Oct. 17, 1927

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Sidewalks of New York. The mysterious Eddie Dowling to whom Graham McNamee referred, irrelevantly, in his broadcasting to 50,- 000,000 people from the ringside of the Tunney-Dempsey fight and to whom the same Mr. McNamee referred equally irrelevantly through the press box microphone at the first World's Series baseball game, is now revealed. All Broadway and showbusiness knew him anyway as actor and producer of Sally, Irene, and Mary and Honeymoon Lane. To the public at large he is just another theatrical producer, fortunate in his word-of-mouth advertising. His show is much like his earlier shows; sweet and swift and aimed at the simple public rather than the shrewd. It is all Manhattan life in tinsel musical comedy caricature. The obstreperous Ray Dooley (Mrs. Bowling) makes parts of it hilariously amusing with her squalling childlike tactics. There is one terrible moment when an actor representing Governor Alfred Emanuel Smith (whom the show booms for President) makes a speech to an orphan asylum.

The New York Times: "Composed of the same eminently saleable materials that have made Abie's Irish Rose, mammy songs, Mary Pickford and the comic strips such inexhaustible institutions of our national life." Romancing 'Round. "Fun in the Navy" might be an appropriate subtitle for this selection. It is set on the Brooklyn water front; and a young woman is enamored of one of the sailors. She has a former lover and an irascible father of impeccable lineage. These splatter the stage with farce and melodrama to a happy, if firmly foregone, conclusion. Helen McKellar, called to the part on less than a week's notice, is more than fitted for the foremost role.

Dracula. A quarter century ago, a book (Bram Stoker's Dracula) dealt with a gruesome being, dead five centuries, who haunted maidens' boudoirs in the shape of a bat, to drink their blood. So horrible were its beastly visions that many a maid fell helpless with hysterics; mothers banned the book, after reading it secretly themselves, and fainting. This book is now a play, packed grimly with cursing madmen, open graves, the scream of dogs, the shadow of Beath.

The world, or a least that particle of it which is represented in the audience at Manhattan theatres, has come a long way in 25 years. Now maidens can see grisly horror, and withdraw between the acts to smoke a cigaret and talk calmly of their minor vices. But when they are in the theatre they can scarcely resist

Dracula; nor can their stalwart escorts. It is a chamber of horrors to raise the most jaded hair. Viewed technically it has its faults of mechanics and an occasional unevenness of interest. It is well but by no means perfectly played. Yet the material is morbidly magnificent. And of course it is all perfectly silly.

Alexander Woollcott, New York World: "Ye who have fits prepare to throw them now."

John Anderson, New York Evening Post: "See it and creep."

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