The New Yorkers. This show has a plethora of talent. There is Ann Pennington, Ted Waring & Pennsylvanians, Charles King, Marie Cahill, Richard Carle, Clayton, Jackson & Durante and blonde Frances Williams—not to be confused with blonde Hope Williams, who is also in the cast. The songs and lyrics were written by Yaleman Cole Porter, the scenery de-signed by Yaleman Peter Arno. Unfortunately, there are so many stars in the show that most of them do not appear as often as the audience might wish. Dancer Ann Pennington has only two small numbers. Hope Williams, appearing for the first time in musicomedy, sings but one song. But svelte Frances Williams ably croons "Go Into Your Dance," "I'm Getting Ready for You," "The Great Indoors," all of which are excellent. An abundance of rowdy comedy is supplied by Clayton, Jackson & Durante, who have some new material to add to their ever-welcome, hysterical acts, "Wood," "Money" and "The Hot Patata." Hoarse-voiced Jimmie Durante, as a college professor at Sing Sing, is advised by Hope Williams: "You've got to shoot your way to freedom!" Says he: "Who is this guy Friedman, a lawyer?" The New Yorkers provides a long and entertaining evening. Alison's House. Susan Glaspell has written a play about famed Poetess Emily Dickinson (1830-86) for Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre. Playwright Glaspell's Emily Dickinson is Alison Stanhope, who lived not in Massachusetts but in Iowa. However, both Alison and Emily made their trips to Washington, wrote poems to a hopeless love whose portrait hung above a desk, left memories jealously guarded by their families. The play opens 18 years after Alison's demise, on the last day of the last century. Alison's house has been sold, the family is moving out. Her relatives gather. All save one have denied themselves life, just as Alison had. After a good deal of melodrama, during which a doddering old aunt trys to burn the house down, a niece gets hold of a packet of Alison's poems— the ones which tell of her thwarted love. The niece is the only one who has attained the freedom which Alison's poems sang about. After three acts she persuades the family that just as the dead poetess was always making little gifts to her intimates, so the poems should be made public as a gift from the dying century to the new.
Miss Glaspell's idea is a sound one, but although she has written a sensitive, charming play, it is tedious, overlong. Much of what Playwright Glaspell intends to be an atmosphere of intense nostalgia develops into mere vacuity. As usual, the Civic Repertory Theatre has given the play first-rate production.