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CRIMSON PLAYGOER

"TOMMY"--Copley

Marie Thurber  Judith Allen Bernard  Fred (Ric) Page Mrs. Henry Wilson  Dorothy Quincy Mrs. (Ma) Thurber  Ethel Arden Mr. (Pa) Thurber  Thaddeus Gray David Tuttle  Jack Egan Tommy Mills  Leon Janney

The authors of "Tommy" Mosara, good, so they wrote a couple more acts. The impression is unmistakable--the play should have ended with the first act; and this despite the fact that the second and third acts are much more amusing than the first.

The leading man of this play, Mr. Leon Janney, self or publicity-director styled movie star, is a beautiful blonde baby-faced boy of an apparent sixteen years. Mr. Janney handicaps his baby face with a nasal contralto voice. Mr. Janney would have an unsuccessful play at the Copley Theatre in Boston in his debit column, were it not for the inimitable sang-froid of Mr. Jack Egan, who, as the all-human political boss of Katonsville, Maryland, steals the show from the rest of the Katonsvillians, and makes an evening spent at the Copley a vaguely good thing.

This thesis is expounded: a man can win a woman only through the subtle workings of that mysterious thing called Romance; and Romance is incompatible with parental approval of the match. Ergo. Mr. Leon Janney, favored by the adenoidal mother and the crustacean father of the big-hipped , must insult, get drunk, and make himself generally obnoxious before he can win their disfavor and the hand of the sought-for female. It all works out. The insufferable suitor Bernie, with his green and Yellow roadster and his blatant familiarities, is foiled in the end, and the baby-faced Tommy gains marriage and all it implies. Unhappy endings are only for tragedies, and this, we are told by the program, is a "scintillating comedy."

There are some low-comedy wisecracks which are not unamusing, and some which are; but the play is saved by Mr. Egan's ability to act, and gains through that the merit of not being a colossal bust.

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