Fallen Angels. Playwright Noel Coward pours two cocktails into his two leading ladies; pours into them a bottle of champagne; pours into them liqueurs. At the middle of the champagne bottle they are quietly but firmly intoxicated; at the curtain they are swirling drunk. Mr. Coward accomplishes this genteel disintegration with impudent realism. Estelle Winwood encourages his impudence with important blurts and wabbles, including the removal of her shoes. To Fay Bainter, is allotted the task of growing more dignified and lady like with every gulp. All this consumes the second act. A first tells how these impeccable and bosom friends had girlish love affairs with the same man. The man is coming back, also their husbands. In the third act they have headaches. Solemn witnesses will deem the second act a disaster; others a delight. The rest matters scarcely at all.
The Plough and the Stars. About 10 p. m. on the night of November 27, 1911 there was a riot at a Manhattan theatre. Eithne Magee, chief actress, was bumped in the head by a potato; rotten eggs squashed stickily against the scenery. Fists flew in the audience; police swooped down in platoons, and the performance proceeded to a dishevelled but triumphant curtain. Horrified Irish residents had precipitated the fuss, irate because Synge's Playboy of the Western World, cast doubts upon the purity of an Irish girl. That the play was presented by their own Irish players, specially imported from Dublin, was no sedative.
When The Plough and the Stars, by Sean O'Casey, a hodcarrier, was given in Dublin there were more screams of libel, more bloody noses. The play tells of the Easter rebellion of 1916 when English machine guns shot holes in a fiery burst for Irish freedom. Some of the characters are patriots; some of them are drunken philosophers; one is a chubby prostitute in scarlet silk. The story tells the stark sorrow of a young bride whose patriot husband dies from the bite of English bullets. She loses her baby; loses her mind.
As presented by these same Irish players, reimported, the play stirred gallery screams of disapproval at the Manhattan opening night; no scrimmage. Pacific natives in the audience viewed it as a shrewd and often violently flavored vision of other peoples' poor; heard some bad writing, some rare poetry, much cutting humor. Much of the acting was of high excellence. Despite flaws quickly visible to the eye of local playgoers, used to smooth productions of the best of our producers, the Irish players are eventful visitors.
Golden Dawn. Spry oldsters and some persons of middle age will remember the name of Oscar Hammer- stein. It was he who precipitated the Manhattan opera war; he who con- ducted the famed Music Hall at 42d St. & Broadway; he who made varied and spectacular sorties beyond the beaten path of the new world's amusements. Last week son Arthur Hammerstein unveiled a vast memorial to him in the shape of an exceedingly Gothic theatre containing everything from an elevating orchestra pit to an organ, before a vast audience containing memorable citizens from James John Walker, Mayor, to Nazimova, actress.