Alien Corn (By Sidney Howard; Katharine Cornell, producer). Once every year or so comes a fine play like this one to bring dignity and value to the U. S. Theatre. As a rule, Eugene O'Neill writes it. This time it is written by another excellent native stagecraftsman, Sidney Howard.
Conway College lies a few hours west of Chicago. It is a struggling little plantation of bay and laurel choking in the broad fields of alien corn. It was inherited by Harry Conway (James Rennie), and he and his wife (Lily Cahill) are rich and tolerant enough to let it flourish—within certain limits. Its faculty is a representative cross-cut of indigenous academic life. There are a prig and a politician. Small, timid Professor Stockton (E. J. Ballantine) has found that pistol practice and an occasional mild laxative keep his nerve up. Another professor, blessedly resigned, loves to teach, ''even if they don't learn a damned thing." Still another, Elsa Brandt (Katharine Cornell), spiritually writhes in agony in the bondage of the music department. She would give her soul to be a concert pianist.
Old Ottokar Brandt (Siegfried Rumann of Grand Hotel), a great bear of a man whose crippled left arm once played a gifted violin, has taught his daughter all he knows of music. Now she must go to Vienna. During the midyear vacation a scholarship is vacated. It may be Elsa's chance. When she fails to get it she enlists the sympathy and warm admiration of Harry Conway. They fall in love, although they try to control it. "It's surprising," says Elsa, with a wry twist of the mouth, "the things we can control."
There was to have been a concert, at which brocaded Mrs. Conway was to have sung, which might have made Elsa some money to help her get away. That falls through when the pianist's romance with Mr. Conway comes out. Then there is a financially disastrous little concert which Elsa arranges herself. In jealous pique, Mrs. Conway has her removed from the faculty. Then neurotic Professor Vardaman (Luther Adler), who has tried Professor Stockton's psychological trick with the pistol, hysterically kills himself when he finds Elsa in Harry Conway's arms.
Now, says Harry Conway, Elsa must give up the fight and find peace with him. A policeman comes in to investigate the suicide.
"You are on the faculty?" the officer asks Elsa.
Over Harry Conway's protests she shouts: "No. No! I am a concert pianist!"
"This is where you live?''
"No! Vienna!"
The beauty and power of Miss Cornell's art have never been set to better advantage. A cast of able actors performs with rare sympathy parts which are written with uniform deftness and inspiration. Alien Corn has to it the good salt taste of Ibsen. In 1925 Playwright Howard got a Pulitzer Prize for his They Knew What They Wanted. He may well get another.