(3 of 3)
The Wooden Dish (by Edmund Morris) tackles an always real situation without much sense of reality. It concerns an old man who has long lived, unwanted, with his son and daughter-in-law and who now, half blind, breaks dishes and sets things on fire. The daughter-in-law threatens to leave the house if Pop is not sent to a "home." Here the play starts to bounce away from its theme: the daughter-in-law begs the boarder to run off with her; the teen-age granddaughter theatrically intervenes. In time, the old man sets forth gallantly for the rest home.
The play has its moments. But besides going all around the mulberry bush, it offers too much routine sentiment and commonplace writing. The evening's one great asset is Louis Calhern's fine playing of the tangy, once powerful, still dignified old man.