The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
448 THE C O M NI O N W E A L September i S, 1926 THE...
...That is, if continuous cepted in straight farce fails to be convincing when strung laughter is any index of success...
...All twelve are brought in for inquisition in the star for nine long years, easily takes the second comedy honors...
...A give an earnest and almost tragic reality to the first two acts...
...It will not help L AWRENCE LANGNER, one of the directors of the you in the least to solve the mystery...
...But Ruth Donnelly up in Westchester county when young Donovan was stabbed as Elizabeth McCue, who has remained engaged to the radio in his chair...
...Laurie, has, as able companions, Ray Walburn as the people decide in the first act that the seemingly most innocent show-off radio man, Charles Dow Clark as the crotchety emof all parties must turn out to be the culprit-not because of ployer, and the reliable Joseph Kilgour as the Wall Street any semblance of logic, but because the hackneyed method has faker...
...The comic friend (for novelty's sake, a radio broadmore stalwart breasts and incipient squeals from less decorous caster...
...These witnesses of this spine-chiller...
...Such prolific activity might create the impression hokum to give everyone a pleasant and untaxing evening...
...But perhaps I can say, with are what the vaudevillians call "sure-fire stuff...
...448 THE C O M NI O N W E A L September i S, 1926 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Donovan it if air he is cast in the Truex mold, although pleasantly individual...
...The father must get uproariously drunk in order to emphasize his restored youth...
...exception of Robert T. Haines, as Peter Rankin, was excellent...
...The young wife is very well played by Mildred Mcbeen to direct suspicion everywhere except in the right direction.Leod, who, as most people now know, can do extremely fine Now, there were twelve people present at the Rankin dinner work when opportunity presents itself...
...clerk tries it, at first with success, but with ultimate and As usual, the management and the author request audience obvious disaster...
...I f I Was Rich The amnesia incident itself is timed with mechanical preT HE new Mansfield theatre has apparently decided to cision to serve a three-act end, and much that might be acplay host to a success at last...
...An irate father gets hit over the head on general principles only, and not at all because of the motive in a taxi accident, and promptly loses his memory for everyrevealed in the last two minutes of action...
...especially when they are strung together with moderate skill...
...Davis intended this to be so...
...He thinks and acts as he did at far too coincidental and manufactured to sustain everything twenty, greatly to the delight of his son and prospective daughthat had gone before...
...Theatre Guild, is the author of this farce-comedy in It is also in order to remark that the solution, when it does which Long Island real estate, ebullient youth, crusty middlecome, seems rather forced and weak...
...expounds the genial philosophy of bluff...
...William Anthony McGuire somewhere between farce and comedy...
...Miriam Doyle, Eleanor found the neighborhood too solemn until he met the rejuveWoodruff, Renita Randolph, and Phoebe Foster did much to nated president of the realty development corporation...
...which is both crude and obvious...
...further complications, and a domestic tragedy is saved only by So be it...
...The light-headedness of his wife brings and reviewers alike to keep dark the secret of the final curtain...
...Like so many ideas which seem captivatingly ingenious at Mr...
...OWEN DAVIS, so legend runs, has more than a hundred Small in stature, well versed in getting points across, gifted produced plays to his credit, with at least three or four with all the mannerisms that melt so quickly from comedy new ones that threaten to run simultaneously in New York into pathos, he needs only a full stock of the old and tried this winter...
...that the ink in his mental fountain-pen is, after the fashion And in hokum this new play abounds-stock situations that of some perverse pens, running over just before it runs dry...
...have been used from the dawn of history and will be until But The Donovan Affair shows no symptoms of so melan- the book of time closes...
...But as the real fun of a mystery play ter-in-law, the chagrin of his mother-in-law and business assois in the mystery and not in its solution, this detracts very ciates, and the satisfaction of a wealthy "prospect" who had little from the evening as a whole...
...but as that all propriety, that, as a somewhat hardened viewer of myste- means merely situations that are simple enough to have a wide ries, my first suspicion, which I discarded for the simple reason appeal, there is no reason for discarding them disdainfully, that it seemed too obvious, turned out correct...
...John Cumberland as for Joe Laurie, Jr., as the earlier play was a vehicle for Ernest the father and Edward G. Robinson as his crusty associate act Truex...
...It is, throughout most of his extravagant and silly wife, the crusty employer with a its length, a rattling good mystery play, swift in its dialogue, sentimental heart, the crooked Wall Street broker, the society compact and interesting in its individual scenes, and replete parasites, the comic and boisterous friend and his equally comic with those inevitable incidents which draw gasps from the best girl...
...That motive seemed thing except his youth...
...I happened to mistrust mildly amusing acts...
...As those who have seen Laurie in vaudeville will know, well-the others passably...
...In fact the entire cast, with the results above mentioned have been safely achieved...
...first two minutes of the play, and at least four of them are candidates for immediate suspicion...
...I shall say nothing to imperil the suspense of future the timely interference of the soft-hearted employer...
...The play is either has written this farce-comedy of clerical ambitions in the same not farcical enough or has too much farce, according to the full-blooded vein as Six Cylinder Love, and quite as expressly end of the line from which you view it...
...There is the honest shipping-clerk, choly an end to the Davis facility...
...The particular party age, and partial amnesia are strung out together for three whom I suspected (man or woman...
...Haines was far too stagey for the general atmosphere of first flash, the trouble with this one is largely in its handling, plausibility so well sustained by the others...
...the shippingmembers of the audience...
...purely the offspring of a personal reaction...
...So my above comment is Henry-Behave...
...The time has come when most Mr...
...blow on the head by a policeman restores the lost memory Niles Welch, Joseph Robison, and Paul Harvey, for the male and brings appropriate remorse, but not before the fortunate contingent, did the same...
...Probably Mr...
Vol. 4 • September 1926 • No. 19
