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Ripples. Fred Stone is back on the stage again after the airplane accident which damaged his agile legs and threatened to eliminate him as chief U. S. entertainer of children and the child-element in grownups. Mrs. Stone is with him as usual; so is his daughter Dorothy; so is another daughter Paula, who thereby makes her theatrical debut. Paula is prettier than Dorothy but cannot dance as nimbly. Fred seems not at all stiff and evokes great glee in his admirers by making a characteristically acrobatic entrance, as though he had been kicked by a horse and landed in a bed of tulips. The story of this musicomedy describes a lazy and bibulous old liar who called himself a descendant of Rip Van Winkle and actually saw dwarfs and played at bowls in the Catskills (this is all logically accounted for by the fact that the dwarfs were making a cinema). A romance is provided for each of the Stone daughters, and Joseph Urban's decor is picturesque.
Out of a Blue Sky. The impeccable actor Leslie Howard has adapted this play from the German of one Hans Chlumberg and the time that both gentlemen have spent on it has been wasted. Herr Chlumberg is a devotee of the old theatrical dogma that the people in the audience are apt to be much more interesting than those on the stage. He pretends that a company which was to have presented Camille has failed to arrive, that the stage manager is therefore forced to call upon the audience for volunteers. Katherine Wilson, Reginald Owen and Warren William then pretend that they are members of the audience and climb upon the stage to act an impromptu triangle drama which is routine and stupid. There is a certain amount of pleasure in watching the accomplished Reginald Owen as the potential cuckold; with a certain technique familiar to the old burlesque halls, involving considerable shouting and blatant fatuity, he makes his role amusing in a way that Herr Chlumberg probably never anticipated.
Ruth Selwyn's Nine Fifteen Revue advertises music and sketches by such names as Gershwin, Herbert, Friml, Youmans, Lardner, Cantor, Loos. Its best music, however, consists of "Knock on Wood" by a relatively unknown composer named Richard Myers and "Get Happy' by one Harold Arlen. And its best comedy emanates from Fred Keating, a young magician, who is able not only to make a canary and its cage vanish from between his finger tips, but even imparts a certain blithe elegance to the art of wizardry which in recent years, no matter how bewildering its feats, has been regarded in a class with yodeling and imitating General Grant. The blonde and lissome Ruth Etting sings several urgent songs and Busby Berkeley has arranged excellent dances. The ceremonies are of the sort known as intimate; they are also diverting, and they begin late enough to allow you to finish your demi-tasse or your grog.
It's a Grand Life. Dramacritics are always finding it necessary to say either that Mrs. Fiske spoils a play or that a play spoils Mrs. Fiske. The talents of this mature, facile comedienne peculiarly fit her for cultivated banter; and banter, suave or not, is hardly descriptive of the dialog of Ibsen, into which, in her time, Mrs. Fiske has made such disastrous inroads. On the other hand, civilized comedies appropriate to her gifts are not being written as often as the sophistication of the time would lead one to expect.