(2 of 2)
These Modern Women. Males have theories, mainly devastating, regarding daughters, sisters, wives and—yes—mothers. Crystallization of many of these theories now appears in a comedy by Lawrence Langner, an executive of the Theatre Guild. The play has not, to be sure, been offered by the Guild, but it bears indistinguishable evidence of skill born of long association with so apt a group. Neatnesses of action, squibs of wit, and carefully concocted climaxes dress it up to seem an important show. Particular patrons did not consider it such. So many nasty things have been said about modern women that it is hard to find a new way of being mean. Mr. Langner's way is to present an aggressive, speech-making female with an indolently attractive husband. Slightly satiated with each other after nine years of marriage, she proposes they polish up their passions through a weekend, respectively, with an English novelist and an infatuated secretary. The episode concludes with the secretary stealing the husband. Chrystal Herne and Minor Watson work willingly and well to vitalize this intricate menage.
Sunny Days. There is, evidently, little that can be done about Frenchmen. They will have mistresses. They have them everywhere, in tasty apartments, in their own drawing rooms, but mostly in musical comedies. For a good laugh in musical comedy just give the audience a French mistress every time. A musical comedy Frenchman lives in eventful agony; he is married to a wife with a nose for news. Inevitable domestic uproars come and go vividly across the scheme of Sunny Days. Billy B. Van gets uncommonly intoxicated in one engrossing passage and there is more than a smattering of sound song. Dancers, good ones, kick capably. Sunny Days, unless one bewares slavishly of imitations, will do.
The Clutching Claw. It is getting so that an actor can scarcely appear on the stage in the first few moments of a new play without being shot down, knifed, garrotted, or done to death with a handsaw. The homicide warns of a nasty mystery brewing in the wings. There must be a helpless heroine and an incurably efficient hero. This play also has a band of international drug dealers, a spiritualistic seance, and a scene in which one actor is propelled in ghostly fashion out over the heads of the audience. This actor, it may be noted, was the only thing about the play over the head of anyone old enough to smoke. The hero is a newspaperman and the goats are the police investigators suffering from acute cranial numbness. Ralph Morgan strives generously to make a man out of the flawless journalist and there are other able acting samples. The performance of the audience, always of chief importance at a mystery play, may be described as adequate. They yelped, shuddered, and some softer souls even hallooed warnings from the orchestra to the gruesomely imperiled Mr. Morgan. Cynics suggested that these warnings might possibly be on the producer's payroll.