Theatre & Cinema

This is going to be a heavy week for drammatic critics. No fewer that seven brand new, glittering productions are scheduled to open. Last night Arthur Hopkins, who has long been absent from the theatre, started the curtain rolling with Philip Barry’s “The Joyous Scason” at the Belasco. Lilian Cish is the star. Another opening last night was “Hotel Alimony” by A. W. Pezet at the Royale. Tonight at the Shubert “All the King’s Horses” will commence its musical career with Guy Robertson. Betty Starbuck and Nancy McCord. Another opening tonight is “American, Very Early” A comedy by Wilton Lackaye and florence Johns. The Vanderbit will house this production. Tomorrow evening Crosby Gaige’s much discussed “A Hat, A Coat and A Glove” will come to the selwyn. This is a mystery play with A. E. Matthews and Nedda Harrigan. “Theodora, the Queen” by Jo Milward and J. Kerby Hawks is also to open tomorrow night at the forrest. The seventh openning of the week will be “The Wind and the Rain” which was brought over from London and will be installed at the Ritz later in the week.

“MEN IN WHITE” CONTINUES

After the debris was cleared away over the week-end it was discovered that the legitimate play enjoying the longest run of the season was “Men is White”. This piece by the young Sidney Kingsley who at this writing is sunning himself on the warm sands of Bermuda has passed the 150 mark and looks very much as thought it would continue well into the Spring. the orginal cast is intact.

Another surprise of the season is the ocntinuation of “tobacco Road”. This adaptation from Erskine Cald-well’s novel of the same name came in for rough handling at the hands of the critics but the fine acting of Henry Hull has kept the pice alive. it is not doing capacity business but enough patrons are clicking through the turnstiles to pay the rent and the cast.

“Fales Dreams, Farewell”, the melodrama aboard the S.S. Atlanta, is another piece that seems able to hang on. Evidently the producers haven’t sold those movie rights as yet.

It is with some gratification that I can announce the “catching on” of “Wednesday’s Child”. This sensitively done plece about what happens to the children of divorced parents drew mixed notices but it seems to have found a ready response from playgoers and business at the Longacre is improving steadily.

After discussions, mass meetings and other manifestations of interest, the producers of “Come of Age” that strange, decided to keep the play open. It will continue at the Mansfield.

“HELL ON EARTH”

The amazing feature about this diatribe against war is that it is in fact as well as in name an “international” picture, couched in language intelligible to all.

Wladmir Sokoloff, of the Moscow Art Theatre, in the leading role as the Jewish soldier who is obliged to leave this bride and don the regimentals of Tsarist Russia, says not a word throughout, depending for effect simply on pantomime. His four buddies, each representing another of the major nations which took a part in the last War, speak in their respective tongues and say virtually the same thing. The dialogue is comprehensible if not dramatically forceful, and in simple pointed scenes the picture moves to ward a climax which must certainly have an indelible impression.

The story is another gruesome tragedy of war revolving about the lives and fortunes of five young men who meet in the trenches and # against each other for no very good reason. They have in common a horror of the conflict, a desire to return home and rejoin their families and an abhorrence for the powers which brought about the War.

The common denominator of their lives is seen in the memory pictures of homes and loved ones which eache of the men envisions, and in the happy comaraderie which protects them from self-destruction. The Russian Jew (Sokoloff). Shell shocked and speechless in his misery; the German (Ernst Busch), virile and desperate with homesick ness; the Frenchman (Georges Peclet), eloquent and deflated by the thunder and wholesale massacre; the Englishman, wounded and lonesome, and the Negro whose optimism has not been dimmed by the sorrow and suffering he sees-all five are living examples of young manhood sascrificed to imperialistic warfare and capitalist evils.

The picture makes no attempt to hide its purpose, and a preceding announcement proclaims a warning against participation in any kind of war, since “war is wrong.”

It is adapted from the book by Leonard Frank, author of “Karl and Anna” (produced by Theatre Guild) and. “The Home Comers”, and was produced in four contries. A.S.