Theatrical check list

George Jean Nathan

• ALL GOOD AMERICANS (HENRY MILLER) — An attempt to make an evening of wisecracks substitute for a play. Hope Williams, Fred Keating and Co. battle with the Perelmans' immaterial script.

• THE DARK TOWER (MOROSCO)— More or less routine murder melodrama. Its good points are some amusing lines and the murder of Ernest Milton at 10:10 p.m., thus leaving the stage for the rest of the evening to the more competent actors.

• MARY OF SCOTLAND (ALVIN) — Maxwell Anderson's occasionally high-spirited reconstruction of the Stuart. A commendable drama, but hardly the masterpiece they're telling you it is. Helen Hayes is a cute paraphrase of Mary.

• THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS (AVON) — A popular success with almost everybody but your departmental professor. It has one amusing scene—the second act bundling business—but the rest of the comedy fails to stimulate your pet.

• TEN MINUTE ALIBI (BIJOU) — More murder melodrama, but a bit more skilful than most. Ably directed and ably acted.

• MEN IN WHITE (BROADHURST)— What happens when a young surgeon allows love and sex to interfere with business. Some interesting details about the medical profession.

• THE GREEN BAY TREE (CORT) — A study of a sybaritic spider's campaign against an impressionable young male fly. A sound play regrettably edited for local consumption.

• CHAMPAGNE, SEC (44TH ST.) — Die Fledermaus under another name. The old Strauss melodies do their best to make one forget the very depressing book.

• SHE LOVES ME NOT (46TH ST.) — Lunatic collegiate farce with some comical moments. It gets more amusing as it progresses.

• THE SCHOOL FOR HUSBANDS (EMPIRE) — The Moliere comedy revised by the MM. Langner and Guiterman. Rather too arty— and entirely too blamed long—to kick up enthusiasm here.

• AH, WILDERNESS! (GUILD)— O'Neill's understanding and amusing comedy of boyhood days, with George M. Cohan doing himself proud in the role of the young hero's papa.

• LET 'EM EAT CAKE (IMPERIAL) — The authors of 0/ Thee I Sing, that wowsome show, give us a sequel that has its points, but that isn't all we had a right to expect of them.

• THREE AND ONE (LONGACRE) — Sexy business from the French vulgarized in an adaptation that is undoubtedly considered aces by the Hattons and the Minskys.

• SAILOR, BEWAREI (LYCEUM) — Sex in the navy. It has some funny lines, but if it is the world-shaking farce-comedy the rest of the critical boys say it is, this magazine is hiring a reviewer who doesn't know what he is talking about and who should be fired.

• MURDER AT THE VANITIES (MAJESTIC) — A combination of cheap murder mystery and girl show that doesn't jell. Yet it seems to have tickled a sufficient number of customers to keep it going.

• AS THOUSANDS CHEER (MUSIC BOX) — A first-rate revue headed by a first-rate cast including the Miles. Marilyn Miller and Helen Broderick and the MM. Clifton Webb and Leslie Adams.

• ROBERTA (NEW AMSTERDAM) —Jerome Kern has turned out a satisfactory score; hut Otto Harbach has fallen down on the book.

• HER MASTER'S VOICE (PLYMOUTH) — Clare Kummer comedy with a lot of successful entertainment in it. It is nicely performed by some of our better histrios, and Max Gordon, the producer, has been able to buy himself a new dinner suit.

• DOUBLE DOOR (RITZ) — Third-rate melodrama about an old female skinflint. It has been touted as something pretty fine. It isn't.

• TOBACCO ROAD (MASQUE)— Dramatization of the Erskine Caldwell novel. An often agitating play about the Georgia cracker.

• JEZEBEL (BARRYMORE)—Owen Davis goes hack to the South of 1853 and to the theatre of 1890 for his 1933-4 contribution to the drama.