Evening star., 1933-09-10
Gotham Views Dull Comedy
Titled 1.-THE Blue Widow"
Queenie Smith, Once Known as Singer and
Dancer Has the Leading Role-"Murder
to Music" Headed for Broadway.
By Arthur Ruhl.

By Arth,
n r ISS QUEENIE SMITH begaI
M dancer with the Metro
|l tha that She she had az gre great t., suecs a:
Singer" she toured for two years.
is engaging, and she has a way {
which would charm wild beasts #
Those who know how delight
ment-as q singer and dancer, that
body or other had seen At to put
gifts and send her to assist In ope
season in q very dull comedy caflet
The latter was Known originally as
''9he Poor Little Thing" and in It poor
little Miss Smith was asked to drag the
poor old audience through one Of those
cloying pieces In which q cooling. cud-
ding little mArshmallow siren reduces
all the men in sight to sentimental
pulp. Mrs. Willie Hendricks, the fe-
male menace in question, was . little
blond widow whom young Mrs. Talbot
had run across somewhere and out Of
pity invited to her country house. She
cooed and pouted and talked Of the
beauty Of the quiet country. of flowers
and the natural things. She lit the
naen6 pipes and poured their drinks for
them. She wasn't very clever, as she
admitted to each In turn. just about al
she was good for was to make q nice,
comfy home.
It's q good old idea, and frequently
slre-flre, but there was little but bore
dom in the use Of 1t made by the au-
thor, Marianne Brown Waters. in the
present play. Miss Smith herself had
little of her usual buoyancy. her rou-
tine with each Of several victims was
pretty much the same. The other
characters were quite hollow and un-
convincing. in spite Of the efforts Of q
capable supporting caste. and once The
spectator got the pattern Of the piece.
which he did almost 1T once. there was
nothing much to see and hear but rust
more and more Of the same thing
Willie" might have been all very well
as one Of the character parts IN an
other comedy, or as the subject Of .
one-act sketch, but dragged out by
very slow direction through the long
course Of three rather more than full
sized acts, it all became pretty tiresome.
There were. however. two or three
interpolated songs-"Couldn't You Fall
for Me?" and You're Everywhere"
among them-and the audience liked
them and tried to make Miss Smith
sing them again. Roberta Beatty. Hell
en- Flint, Albert Van Decker and Sam
Wren we're included Tn a cast which
gave the piece better playing than it
really had any right to expect.
IT isn't often, in mystery melodrama,
that We are admitted to the society
Of characters SO elegant and decidedly
upstage as those which appear In 'Mur-
der to Music" tried out at Jackson
Heights The piano-playing novelist,
the sculptress, the opera singer, the
Westchester widow, the polo playing
scion of long line of best families,
together form a little coterie devoted
stirred by the search for new sensa-
tions They describe themselves as
quite amoral. refer frequently to 10y
atty to ones class" and it need scarcely
be added that the code" which, we are
also assured, governs the behavior Of a
group so eSoteric, has nothing to do
with N R. A.
The economic basis for all this mag
nifcence is a Napoleon of finance. one
Daniel Thrasher. in whose penthouse
apartment the action takes place. And
when Mr.. Thrasher suddenly goes bust,
and after brief interval during which
| the lights 60 out, is found dead In the
street 90 stories below, the unfeeling
police suggest that he didn't commit
| suicide but was thrown over the para
pet by somebody in the party interest
ed in getting the million dollars worth
of life insurance for which they were
to be benef1ciaries.
The merits Of the piece as mystery
melodrama had best wait until 1t ap-
pears on Broadway Meanwhile you
may rest assured that the police speak
French no less huently than their pris-
oners and be interested to learn that
! when Inspector Ryerson cot the Bos-
ton Ryersons') is asked just why he
did so-and-so, his answer. Just as the
final curtain falls, is q languid POSSE
bly, 1t was out OF loyalty to ones
class"
CRITICISM of the critics is. generally
~ speaking, our notion of nothing to
write-or read. A playwright starts
with life, or ought to do so, and makes
a play which might be described as
life once removed" Then the critic
writes a piece about the authors play,
which makes 1t life twice removed.
When the critics start in writing about
each others writing you arrive, natur-
ally, so far as life is concerned, pretty
close to zero.
Such, We repeat is our general notion,
but recent experiences in the Summer
theaters of the so-called barn-circuit,
plus certain contrasts when one or two
of the pieces tried out In the country
came to town, make us feel, neverthe-
less, like expressing just wee bit of
impatience with the wallops which some
of our belligerent colleagues seem to de-
light in whanging down on the heads of
quite inofiensive and really rather like
able little plays.
There was such a one, for instance,
which we saw last July as the guest
of thoroughly civilized couple at their
country place about an hours express
train journey from New York Before
the depression the couple used to follow
the New York theaters pretty closely,
and the ritual Of such evenings in town
included a good dinner before the
theater, q supper afterward, and C COM
Portable night at New York hotel.
Such weekly or fortnightly bats" prov
ing too expensive nowadays, and the
suburbanites preferring to give up