The Crimson Playgoer

"Come Home to Roost," an American Comedy by Fred Herendeen, is principally another way for the playgoer to fritter away an evening until the season settles down to being serious. In spite of the resuscitation of some very old jokes, the evening will be pleasantly enough spent, with an almost perpetual grin occasionally erupting into a laugh. But that's about all to expect.

A mild-mannered, stoop-shouldered mathematics professor of Wisconsin University is blissfully married, and, he thinks, free to skip away with his jovial wife to the Isle of Capri, there to write a book about mathematics, but tied up in some symbolical way with paper dolls. The reason why the couple feel so jubilantly footloose is that they have married off two of their daughters, and are about to place the third. But the reversal is sudden and through: two of the daughters come stalking home, and the third one quarrels with her beau.

Some of the minnows out of this pretty kettle of fish are probably meant for matrimonial comment: the veritas in vine sort of thing. But one can't be impressed by profundity. One of the girls left her husband because he never took her to the movies, but instead made very disagreeable stinks with his chemicals. She goes back to him when she learns that he is through with the smelly part of his work, and is about to go to France to make perfume. Perhaps Mr. Herendeen has his tongue in his cheek about that daughter, but he is dead serious about the next one. Her troubles are not chemical, but biological. She couldn't give her husband a baby, so decided to give him a chance with somebody else. His not wanting that chance didn't make any difference. This is all very well, except that the solution as presented on the stage is biologically unsound, as at least every woman in the audience must have noticed.

The acting features Herbert Yost and Mary Young, and is excellent throughout. Greta Granstedt as the youngest daughter is incredibly babyish, but it's fairly clear that she's meant to be that way.

Prominent among the delights of the play is the program. If you haven't already been won over, go to the show for the sake of the program, which you can't very well get otherwise. It was written by a clever man whose wit was just a bit too fast for him. A sample: "as fast on the verbal comeback as a handball."