CRIMSON PLAYGOER

"Storm Child," the new play which John Craig, 2nd, and Mary Young are presenting these days at the Copley Theatre is a horror play in the accepted Boris Karloff tradition and is to be commended at the outset for including every dramatic element which might be conceived as pertinent to a genuine, old style terrorizer.

The entire action takes place in a desolate stone house situated on a remote New Jersey sand bar and with the constantly throbbing with the roar of the sea and eerie swish of the wind. The dramatics personae includes a mother who is so devoted to her mysterious infant that she places no value upon the lives of the child's nursemaids; a father whose sole energies are absorbed in his relentless pursuit of the poor nurses; a servant who is blind, about seven feet tall and as ugly as his disposition. There are sundry other characters moving about with appropriate mystery their evils to perform. There is a mysterious old tower which houses, one is cryptically informed, some of the weirdest specimens of taxidermical skill, a dilapidated old boat landing where sport the largest and most vicious crabs imaginable and numerous other terrible appurtenances to frighten the timid and delight the morbid.

The action seems to center about the infant Peter and since the management has requested that the child's secret be kept from an eager public it is rather difficult to say much about the plot. Finessing the harrowing details this column will consider its duty done when it announces that the story is long in telling, poorly paced and so skillfully constructed that the climax comes at the end of the first act, thus making the ensuing two acts dependent upon the customary dramatic devices such as inexplicable flashes of lightning and a series of unexpected entrances. The most interesting thing about the play is the child Peter and we're afraid that further information on that score can be gained only by actual attendance at the gory proceedings. Unable to resist the temptation to hint we'll just tell you that Peter is more apparent than real.