The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-26
"The Love Habit" Proves h. teresting to Critics-"The Adding Machine"
 Is Tragedy

NEW YORK, March 25.- A good l French farce flows so swiftly and gurgles so merrily that it's easier to write another than to describe | good one and say wherein and why it's good and just how good. Not l for us the easier way, owever. but the easiest way of all, which is merely to discourse around and about such a farce, called "The Love Habit"
 Brock Pemberton, young fellow from Salina, Kan., has become one of the leading importers of theatri- cal Iuxuries from Paris and Rome, having produced already this season "The Plot Thickens" and "The Six Characters in Search of an Author. 'The first was bit thinnish where it's name was thickest and soon wore out. But the characters" ran for weeks ere giving up the search.
 Now Pemberton has fished around among the scripts he brought back from Paris in the fall and, calling his cast together again, has pro- duced .The Love Habit which. is French farce and much better one than the unclever title would ever tell the world were the letters writ on high Gibraltar.
 He Falls in Love.
 It is about young fellow. played by James Rennie, who sees a beau tful young lady fainting and by
 neat stop off his shoe-tops. fields her for clean put-out before she touches gravel Taking the dis tressed beauty home in a cab he kisses her, being Frenchman, falls i:. love, being a farce hero, and an nounces that he will win her, being very good looking. The three acts are concerned with his winning and the play comes to quizzical ending which doesn't leave you in doubt not you!
 In this play it is easy to see why the American farceur writes in such
 lethargic meter. He doesn't date the
 theses which are ready to French mans pen. For instance. when the lady's husband learns that the young man is in love with her, he pleads
 with him to go away and you have
 one of the most comical scenes os
 the evening. An American writer would have been forced to avoid that scene of wind up his farce with tragedy then and there
 The Theatre Guild produced this week a drama--a strange, interest,"
 ing drama-called "The Adding Ma chine." The season is limited. but the play probably will move up to
 one of the larger theatres in a few weeks. It is by Elmer L. Rice, who tackles again and, we thought, does
 better with the unanswered query or mankind: Whats it all about?"
 Kills the Boxs.
 The same theme was discussed be- fore in "The World We Live In," that insect play, and ill the Equity's Roger Boomer" Even if Rice
 doesn't answer the question, he
 treats it more amusingly than it has
 been treated in the other two plays which tried to go behind the veil this winter.
 After 25 years work at his ledger,
 Mir. Zero. the drabbest imaginable
 sort of cringing office sfob. Is fired because an adding machine has been added to the office equipment which
 will do the work for less money. He kills the boss with bill-file or
 spike.
 He is executed-off-s f-stage and with no inconvenience to the audience and then you find him in the Elysian fields complaining because of the mixed crowd" and remarking that there as he had hoped 10 find. Oh, he isn't happy until he finds a huge adding machine on. which he labors for countless ages, and then, poor soul, an official tells him he must go back to earth, be reborn in the body of another baby and go through it all again.
 Miss Pauline Frederick, retrieved from the movies. returned late in the week in play called "The Guilty One" She had been away almost ten years.