THE CRIMSON PLAYGOER PAGE

Only a very, very tired T. B. M. could get much of a thrill out of the heralded "Vanities", Earl Carroll's Fourth Edition, now playing at the Shubert. It would be charitable even to play with the name, and besides there are more damning criticisms for a revue than "inane", though certainly it is that. Perhaps the show is languishing with the man who gave it birth. Perhaps it never was any better and its 13 month run in New York is just a sad and true commentary on the fact that it takes all kinds of people to fill theatres.

All of this because the "Vanities" didn't live up to expectations and because a revue can not be mediocre, it is either very good or quite bad. Otherwise Johnny Dooley, almost always, and Joe Cook, featured, but less consistently, can wheedle laughs from their audience and furnish amusement, never hilarious. The chorus, so integral a part of every revue, must be particularly brainy. Condemn the chorus and it leaves the show scarcely a leg to stand on.

The trouble was, that the divine spark which entertainers sometimes catch and which draws the audience into a kindred state of mind, has either been completely extinguished or badly dampened in the sudden jump to Boston's early spring. Some of the acts had distinct possibilities but they never seemed to materialize. Also most of them were executed so crudely that it required some effort to be overcome by their humor. The exception was an operatic version of a sixteenth century "pick up" in the best New Yorkese of the twentieth century. Johnny Dooley carried off the comedy honors in this, and the singing was by far the best of the evening. Another Dooley production, his strong man act, was quite a bright spot until it died from over-exposure. Joe Cook's chief contribution to the evening's entertainment, and one which did much to justify his headliner abilities, was his interpretative reading of an incident in the life of little Johnny Skunk or perhaps it was one of the other Little Folks. Miss Del Faust did well in a song and dance role. A sort of desperate finale advertising the feminine B. V. D. comes too late, just too late