Merrily We Roll Along (by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart; Sam Harris, producer). "What are you having?" a young man at Richard Niles's party asks Julia Glenn (Mary Philips) in the first scene of this play. Too bored to hand him her glass, she says: "I'm having not much fun." The acts that follow explain why not only Julia Glenn but Richard Niles (Kenneth MacKenna),the successful playwright who is her host; Althea Royce (Jessie Royce Landis), the aging actress who is his wife, and most of the other members of the large cast fail to enjoy themselves.
The second scene shows what happened in a smart restaurant seven years before the Niles party. Richard Niles punches the face of his friend Painter Jonathan Crale (Walter Abel) for implying that, by marrying Althea Royce, he is prostituting his talent. The third scene, a year before the second, shows how Richard Niles got involved with Althea Royce in the first place and how he treated his old friends when he first got rich. The fourth goes back a little farther and starts to unravel the story of Richard and his first wife, Althea and the producer she deserted when she met Richard. By the time Merrily We Roll Along reaches Act III, Scene 3, Richard Niles is a blithe young valedictorian proudly spouting to his college classmates on the subject of ideals. "I give you the words of Polonius," he squeaks, " 'To thine own self be true. . . .'
The method of telling a story backward is not new, either in fiction or on the stage. Merrily We Roll Along rolls along considerably less merrily after the end of the second act when it has become completely apparent that the tragedy which Authors Kaufman and Hart are unveiling with such deliberate irony is the old and familiar one of an artist turned successful hack. Superbly staged by Kenneth MacKenna's brother, Jo Mielziner; superbly acted by the biggest cast seen in a legitimate Broadway production this season, Merrily We Roll Along is an amusing and affecting study of interesting peewees, ornamented brightly by cartoons of genuine saloon celebrities and honest wisecracks. Asked if he has the morning paper Jonathan Crale becomes indignant. "I don't take a morning paper," he snarls. "Does Hearst buy my paintings?"
Small Miracle (by Norman Krasna; Courtney Burr, producer) attempts, with considerable success, to make a Grand Hotel of the lounge in a Manhattan theatre. In the narrow space between the Men's Room and the Ladies' Room are packed a half-dozen plots and subplots. There is the harassed man whose wife is having a baby, the callow collegian who gets caught lying to his sweetheart, the burly youth who finds it embarrassing to have just married a scrawny dowager, the bewildered old couple from the country. There is, too, the graciously unfaithful wife (Ilka Chase) who discovers that her lover is a cad. An earnest coatroom attendant, who has got mixed up with one of the girl ushers, steals Miss Chase's diamond pin to pay for an abortion while his devoted fiancee, aware of his predicament, is needlessly surrendering to her employer to get the money.