The Crimson Playgoer

A and B men in English 22 will enjoy this comedy because it shows what a persistently diligent young prospective playwright can do if he puts his mind to it. There is something scholarly about the play; something reminiscent of a textbook of modern drama; of a literary era not yet ready to emerge from the ground into which it was gratefully run before the end of the last decade.

The sly humor which characterizes most of the comic dialogue in the play is, like the title, forced and manifestly uninspired. But not all the lines fall short. The Plymouth audience did not hesitate to show appreciation when Hope Williams, on dismissing her over-formalized Rising Young Business Man suitor (Coburn Goodwin), asked him as a last favor to "goose Mrs. Cruikshank for me."

Despite the fact that "All Good Americans" goes very sour in creating a lot of hackneyed characters whose Third Avenue realism and happy-go-lucky American hearts of gold have long since been outlined even from the movies, the good American types are nevertheless all real people; and even if you have seen them many times before, it is not painful to see them again, especially if they don't take themselves seriously, as they don't at the Plymouth.

Moreover, the acting is on the whole good. Miss Williams gets little maudlin at times, but at others she is refreshing. And so is Fred Keating. The most polished bits of all are engineered about Michelette and Claude Burani and George Spelvin as concierge, gendarme, and French gentleman, respectively, who are the principal artists in two local color episodes which almost called for encores last night.

For Boston, the play is on the whole amusing. It creates the kind of enjoyable boredom which comes from the feeling that this thing which has such publicity and attention isn't really so far behind your own creative ken.