(3 of 6)
The English company from the Haymarket Theatre migrated to Manhattan for the occasion. Joyce Barbour, she of the errant affections, is both beautiful and accomplished in her craft. Leo G. Forbes and Ralph Forbes combine the severity and simplicity of bitter emotion with distinction.
Nerves. Probably when the discerningly competent John Farrar and Stephen Vincent Benet are more experienced in the Theatre, they will look back upon Nerves and wonder why they ever did it. It originated as a one-act War play, was spread thinly through three acts and emerged as such an inexpert contrivance that the critics quite lost their tempers. The story discusses a young aviator with a bad heart and too much imagination who went to War, funked his duty, was driven to it, crippled himself for life getting his Boche. There is also a girl who decided with difficulty between him and the vigorous captain of the squadron. The second act of the play brings the drama of war on the lines into intense, if slightly conventional, relief. The locale of the other acts is on Long Island. College men bandy injudiciously selected slang and punch each other to display affection. Winifred Lenihan gave her usual flawless performance as the heroine, while lesser flights of excellence are provided by Humphrey Bogart and Mary Philips.
Heymood Broun—"Aerial warfare pictured as a sort of Yale Alumni activity."
Top Hole. There is not much to be said about a musical comedy except that it is good or bad. Top Hole happens to be bad.
The Tantrum. Nearly everyone will recall the generously constructed Roberta Arnold of The First Year and Chicken Feed and her voice that twangs like a guitar. She is an anomalously successful actress, having neither beauty, restraint nor reverence for the canons of her craft. Yet she is aggressively effective, recklessly individual. She is Roberta Arnold. You either like her or you do not. Most people do.
She is herein concerned with displaying the vagaries of the modern shrew. The curtain ascends on a man and his wife quarrelling at a theatre. The scene slips away to their comfortable Long Island home where she bickers and batters him into revolt. He deserts to the easier confines of debauchery, finally is shot by the shrew. The scene reverts to the theatre. It has all been a play. The shrew is reduced to tearful penitence and they depart, presumably to a life of humdrum harmony.
Through that first act at home, Miss Arnold resembles a series of explosions caught at the precise moment of detonation. She wastes gestures; she talks at the top of her voice, always out of turn; she overacts magnificently—and makes you like it. Thereafter the play runs down a trifle. There are other good performances, notably Will Deming's difficult drunkard. Yet without Miss Arnold the play would be fustian. With her it seems eventful entertainment.
Percy Hammond—"Expert and amusing."
ncG1vNJzZmibn6PBprrTZ6uipZVjsLC5jq2gpp1fqMKjv8KroJudomSus8DInKOeZ2BhgHR8j3JjcGlpZYV5eZJlZ2lmmKm6rQ%3D%3D