THE SERVICE NEWS PLAYGOER

In dramatic technique and swiftness of dialogue Elmer Rice has rung the bell with his new comedy, "Dream Girl," providing Betty Field with a long and complex part which she handles with admirable skill.

Miss Field is given a great many interesting and amusing things to do and say by her author-director-husband and a fascinating and endless series of sets by Jo Mielziner on which to work, so it is doubly unfortunate that the play as such just barely fails to make the grade.

Rice intersperses the action with dramatizations of a number of Miss Field's daydreams during the course of 20 spring hours, using them as a clever satire on popular conceptions of American life, to wit: murder, prostitution, law courts, trips to Mexico and so forth. But the search by Miss Field for a man, her final choice, and her reasons for it are less skillfully handled. And those things are essentially what the play is about.

One unusual feature of "Dream Girl" is its free treatment of the time element. Although it proceeds chronologically, hours sometimes pass in the course of a few minutes. Rice doesn't try to account for every second, and the swift-moving hours give the play a streamlined effect.

"Dream Girl" will inevitably be compared with "Lady in the Dark," what with the dream sequences and the choice between males. Rice is less pretentious and more entertaining than was Moss Hart. And Miss Field can spot Gertrude Lawrence all those elaborate night dreams with songs and dances, and still come out ahead on general charm and reality.

She carries the virtuosity of her role with a simplicity foreign to virtuoso performers. The result is a performance of distinction as well as of wit and brilliance.