Daily News from New York, New York • 320

SUNDAY NEWS, MARCH 5, 1933 53 MING ihe OLD PURITANS FOR A RID THE GCLDEN DOZEN Current Rttrnrtionai In New York then4re that have recorded long-est Dramatic ftnme Perforninnre "Dinner at Eight" 155 "Dangerous Corner" 153 "Late Christopher 152 "Autumn 126 "Biography" 96 "Goodbye Again" 79 Musical "Music in the Air" 138 "Take a Chance" 113 "(Jay Divorce" 110 "Walk a Little Faster" 100 "Melody" 23 "Strike Me Pink" 1 BAINTER, LOVE PROBABLE FOR NEW MAUGHAM PLAY SAM H. HARRIS, proceeding unusually carefully in casting W. Somerset Maugham's "For Services Rendered," has interviewed hundreds of actors and signed no contracts as yet but chances are that his company will include Fay Bainter, Montagu Love, Henry Daniell, II. Reeves-Smith and Jane Wyatt, Possibility of a Winter Garden revue has vanished. Pictures are being sought for the house Reports that a musical will go into the new, or RKO, Roxy are declared to be unfounded.

The management contemplates no change from the present picture policy, for the balance of this season at least. Lee Shubert is bent upon an active Spring career. His production of a German play, "A Trip to Pressburg," starts in Philadelphia tomor- row night, with a cast including "American Dream" of George O'Neil Shockingly Maintains Guild Standard By BURNS MANTLE. THEY ARE a fairly messy lot, the Pingrees, as George O'Neil exposes them in his first play, "American Dream," at the Guild. They never were much good, not from the first, when they arrived in the White Angel and settled down in New England.

The year was 1690. It may be Mr. O'Neil looks upon his play as corrective. He probably feels, in that case, that exposure is the first step in creating it desire for improvement. It may be, on the other hand, that he merely hit upon the theme the Pingrees, representing the Puritan strain in American social life, an a solid foundation on which to build a character drama that ulioulil be both sound in psychology and dramatic in statement.

So bitter is his attack, however, that a casual spectator is quite certain to feel that "American Dream" could have been born of nothing Iss than a great disgust. Disgust with life in general, so far as it is discovered in a so-called progressive civilization. With life in particular as one American society set has come to debase and waste it. As entertainment "American Dream" is fortunate in having the Theatre Guild as its sponsor. If, in other words, this particular play were ever to go off the Guild standard it would be terrible.

It is pretty terrible as it is in the free employment of oaths and nymbols. Physical rather than spiritual symbols. You will be remembering that Mr. O'Neil starts his drama with Daniel, son of Roger Pingree, standing up and defying father back in 1690. Father would have his son wed with Lydia Kimball, which would be to his material advantage.

But Daniel will have none of Lydia. lie prefers the little black-haired daughter of a lady variously suspected of being a witch. Likewise a lady of loose morals. And to make good his preferences he consigns his bitterly protesting parent to liell and walks out with his girl. The second batch of Pingrees we meet 150 years later.

Now American civilization has advanced to that high state in which the bi.ya and girls have been gathered in from the farms and turned into emaciated millhands that the fine, big men of New England may fatten on their labor and grow rich through their exploitation. In a way this is the most hateful of all pictures of our ancestors. Because, no doubt, we know the truth of it. Or some part of the truth of those old skinflint Puritans who Kathenne Wilson, Roger Pryor and Albert van Dekker. After a fortnight there it will come to New York.

In addition, there's the likelihood of a Shubert production of "The Green Bay Tree," the Mordaunt Shairp piece which is running in London Another London hit, "Ten-Minute Alibi," by Anthony Armstrong, has been acquired by some New York manager but Leah Salisbury, the agent, declines to say who it is. Peggy Fears plans to bring "Champagne Supper" into' the Bilt-more Theatre during the week of March 20. This is the play by Elizabeth Schauffler which was tried out in Philadelphia last January and closed for revision. Dorothy Hall and Kenneth MacKenna headed the cast in the tryout and will be in the piece when it opens here. George M.

Cohan may take "Pigeons and People" on "a two-month tour after the play ends its run here In the Wee-Levanthal revival of Avery Hopwood's "Tha Best People" will be Frances Mc-Hugh, Derek Fairman, Maida Reade, Seth Arnold, King Calder and others. Harrv Kline, one-time nssof-Jatn Walter C. Kelly, vaudeville' Virginia Judge, is in the Guild's "Both Your Houses" due to-morrow at the Royale. du. fatten on the misery of the underpaid, overworked, underfed workers.

And import even cheaper labor to supplant them. This Daniel Pingree of 1S4! is tlmost noble in his determination to have nothing to do with these, his people. He leaves them, his wife, his complacent mother, hi:) betrayed daughter, and treks westward to go in for empire building. i of the Cha'nins, has taken over tha management of the Manhattan Theatre, formerly Hammerstein's. More or less definitely scheduled for premieres next week are six plays and no musicals.

"Far Away Horses," described as a comedy of Irish life in America, is set for tha Beck with Leona Hogarth and NcX Marion Barney in principal roles. Kuth Gordon will appear as the star of "Three-Cornered Moon." Revivals of "The Best People" and "Riddle Me This" will appear, and two plays called "Scandalous Affair" and "Masks and Faces" are on the books. "Another Language" begins its road tour in Brooklyn this week. But it is the last act, the 1933 exposures, that furnish the play's real sensation, and will draw most of its trade. The old Pingree niiinsion still stands in 1933.

There have been wings built on, and upper stories, But the old living room is much as it was. And now the erotic wife of Daniel Pingree 3d is entertaining at a cocktail party she has organized to celebrate her fifth wedding anniversary. Daniel is there. A little drunk and utterly disgusted. He wears a sweater, and baggy trousers, and soiled tennis shoes.

He is a parlor Communist and boastful. His chief aim is to insult his wife's guests. The guests are an assortment of social eccentrics. A befuddled colored poet. An Indian married to an Arizona heiress, who beats out rhythms on a tom-tom for a boastful nymphomaniac to wiggle to.

A youthful Harvard professor who can only function normally when -he is well liquored. A Jewish banker who carries his own economist with him to serve as a yes-yes chorus in support of his (the bunker's) c' Urlusions. An effeminate male pianist. A high-minded but, hopelessly embittered opening tomorrow at the Majestic Theatre. Glenn Anders and Dorothy stickney head the cast.

SHOWS TONIGHT Alia Nazi mo va (above) begins her cus a Spring service with the Civic Repertory Thea-trm tomorrow but at the New Amsterdam i -stead of 14th St. She will act in "The Cherry Orchard," which will divide the week with "Alice in Wonderland." Dorothy Appleby (left) returns tomorrow in the revival of "Young Sinners" at the Ambassador, Two performances will be given tonight for the benefit of the Stage Relief Fund. "Gay Divorce" will 1. nu 1 1 1 1 I Osgood Perkins and Sally Bates (above) continue as the more or less troubled hero and heroine of "Goodbye Again" at the Masque. Mary Wigman right) will make her last New York appearance until 193S tonipht at the New Yorker Theatre.

$3 top, no tax, and "The Late Christopher Bean" will be acted at Henry Miller's Theatro at a $2 top. Box offices open at noon today. In "Lone Valley This Week's Neiv Plays tt jsrr-' i fii Here indeed is a pretty mess to set before a patriot. Its extravagances may be denied, but not those social trends that have inspired it. In the end, and in fifteen minutes of the boldest language that has yet issued in practically a continuous stream from the stage of a local theatre, disgusted Daniel curses his ancestors for the cheats and hypocrites they are, curses his wife for the unholy thing she is, curses life for the ghastly mess God's alleged creatures have made of it.

Then be shoots himself through the heart and the party is over. "American Dream" is not exactly a pretty debut for a poet dramatist. But there is good writing in it and good drama. Also numerous indications that the author believes he has something to Bay that should be said. Great dramatists have leaped far from springboards less resilient than these.

Assuming there are still theatre followers who take a book-reading Interest in the drama, these should be told that Appleton has just issued two new Barrett Clark anthologies that practically cover the-world. That, in fact, is their title, "World Drama." They begin with Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound" and come down through the ages, reprinting significant plays representing practically every country on earth, ending with Ibsen's "A Doll's House." And every play, guarantees Mr. Clark, is interesting. He has read them all and he knows. ris sex comedy hit of three years ago, with Dorothy Appleby in her original role.

TUESDAY "The Lady Refuses," at the Bijou. Comedy by Saxon Kling, with Lou Tellegen, Cecil Spooner and others. WEDNESDAY "Lone Valley," at the Plymouth. Sophie Treadwell, author of "Machinal," produces her own play, with Margaret Borough, Virginia Tracy and others in the cast. "Cinderella's Brothers," at the Mansfield.

Comedy by Arthur Ebenhack. MONDAY "Both Your Houses," at the Royale. Play by Maxwell Anderson, with Walter C. Kelly, Mary Philips, Jane Seymour, Morris Carnovsky, Aleta Freel and others. Produced by the Theatre Guild.

"The Cherry Orchard," at the New Amsterdam. Nazimova and the Civic Repertory production of the Chekov masterpiece will split the next four weeks with "Alice in Wonderland." "The Cherry Orchard" will be played from Monday to Wednesday, "Alice" from Thursday to Saturday. "Young Sinners, at the Ambassador. Revival of Elmer Har Marguerite Borough will have a leading in Sophie Tread-well's production of her own play, "Lone Valley," opening Wednesday at the Plymouth. Miss Treadwell is best remembered for her authorship of Machinal.".