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Blind Mice. The all-female cast in this show is composed of 18 inmates of a working women's hotel. Such a situation has comparatively fresh dramatic potentialities, but the story is archaic and the fact that all dealings with the unseen men characters have to be carried on offstage strips the play of vigor. The main events are thus approached obliquely. When Miss Claiborne Foster wishes to convey the idea that her rich lover has deserted her, that her employer—the proprietor of the drugstore in which she works—has consented to marry her though she is pregnant, the action must be signified by speeches to her fellow-guests in the waiting room of the hostelry.
Princess Charming. Even with a book rewritten by the late Hoofer Jack Donahue, music by Albert Sirmay and Arthur Schwartz, scenery by Joseph Urban, Princess Charming might have been a presentation more on the lavish side than on the entertaining. The fact that it has sparkle and distinction is almost entirely attributable to blithe, blonde, beauteous Jeanne Aubert, the French comedienne whose husband (Packer Nelson Morris of Chicago) lately sought to enjoin her from taking part in theatricals. Audiences were delighted with her genuine Franco-American accent,* her thoroughgoing naughtiness, her lip-twisting method of vocal delivery —first brought to fame when she popularized the Parisian songlet Si Tu Vois Ma Tante.
Although the spice of the performance, Actress Aubert's part in Princess Charming is somewhat vague, she being an adventuress through whose boudoir a great many comic figures flit back and forth.
The play itself has to do with a very complicated royal romance in the kingdoms of Elyria and Novia. As the Princess, Evelyn Herbert {The New Moon) is luscious-looking, hits good rich notes but experiences difficulty in making the lyrics intelligible. No such impediment is suffered by Actress Aubert who, in spite of her unfamiliarity with the language, manages to stop the show with a charming, multiple-rhymed ballad called "I Love Love," in which at one point she laments :
But, damn it, you're Just another amateur.
Solid South is the story of how two Pittsburgh millionaires—father & son—pierce the Mason-Dixon line, win the hands of two aristocratic daughters—widow & child—of the Confederacy. Antagonistic to the Yankees' scheme is the ladies' father-in-law and grandfather, Major Bruce Follonsby (Richard Bennett). If the play is meant to satirize life in the South, or even the stage-idea of life in the South, it fails.
London Calling. This is the sort of theme that Author Pelham Grenville Wodehouse likes to play with. There is a charming young Englishman who makes a sudden appearance in Manhattan, bows his way into the apartment of his U. S.
brother whom he has never seen, promptly falls into a deep alcoholic sleep. Then he gets a job selling securities, prevents his brother from marrying a young woman of whose shortcomings only the trans-Atlantic relative is aware. At the final curtain, Manhattan has been made a better place to live in by the visiting Englishman. Geoffrey Kerr wrote the play, ably acts the lead, but he is no Wodehouse.