Weekend Amusement Calendar

Theatre

Christopher Blake--At the Plymouth. Moss Hart's first play since his wartime pageant, "Winged Victory,' and a very controversial drama it is. Reactions to it have varied all the way from a "shoo-in for the Pulitzer Prize" to "not a success," with many puzzled audiences unable to make up their their minds. It deals with the problem of divorce and leans heavily (some say too heavily) on dream sequences, with the crisis coming in the child's choice between his mother and father. At any rate, it is a theatrical experience of high order.

Years Ago--At the Copley. Ruth Gordon's autobiographical entry into the 1946-47 theatrical sweepstakes deals with her early life in Wollaston, Mass. Staring Frederic March, Florence Eldridge, and young Patricia Kirkland and directed by Garson Kanin, it is almost all topnotch humor of Miss Gordon's school. On opening night the second act curtain and the finale were weak, but by now they have probably been patched. If you go for the Gordon school, you'll have a better chance of seeing it here than later in New York.

Ballet Theatre--At the Opera House. The best of the ballet companies which are currently battling for supremacy in the U. S., the Ballet Theatre stars Igor Youskevitch and Nora Kaye in a repertoire of both classical and original modern productions. Antony Tudor is the artistic and Max Goberman the musical director. Tonight's performance will be Giselle, a restaged classical ballet; Interplay, the modern dance which made such a hit last season; and Facsimile, this year's important premiere, a Leonard Bernstein-Jerome Robbins product.

Born Yesterday--At the Wilbur. A road company of the Garson Kanin New York hit, satisfactorily acted and every bit as funny as it always has been. It's no dramatic achievement, but it makes a very entertaining evening in the theatre.

The Magnificent Yankee--At the Colonial, Louis Calhern in his original New York role as the great dissenter. Emmet Lavery's play is by no means top-notch, but it has the virtues of competence and historical interest if none other.

If the Shoe Fits--At the Shubert. A new musical based on the familiar fable of Cinderella. The fairy tale has been transformed into a general hodge-podge of ribald humor, some of its funny and some not so good. Florence Desmond gives the show life with her slyly amusing touches transported from England, but the dialogue is weak. All in all, it's about a 50-50 chance.

Musical Events

The Marriage of Flgaro--At Jordan Hall. Mozart's wonderful opera, in its first presentation by Boris Goldovsky's newly-formed New England Opera Theatre. Goldovsky's project is based on the theory that opera should be as much theatre as music, and this performance will be sung in English. Unfortunately for Yale weekenders, this conflicts with the big game because of its 2:30 o'clock starting time, and as a result will probably interest only those who were caught in the H. A. A. ticket vise.

Boston Symphony Orchestra--Richard Burgin substitutes for Koussevitzky this evening at 8 o'clock at Symphony Hall with an unusual program. The list includes the rarely performed ninety-fifth Symphony in C minor of Haydn, a Stravinsgy Symphony in Three Movements; Ravels suite, "Le Tombau de Coupler in"; and Richard Strauss's "Death and Transfiguration." The orchestra will play again tomorrow afternoon at 3.30 o'clock, with a Prokofleff suite, the Sibelius First Symphony, and the Haydn ninety-fifth making up the program.

Class by Itself

Henry V.--The Laurence Olivier production of the Shakespearean classic rolls into the thirty-fifth week of its only New England engagement, at the Esquire Theatre opposite Symphony Hall. It is really every bit as good as it is cracked up to be, with superb acting and direction contributed by Olivier, with help from Reen Asherton and other British stars, and outstandingly original music by William Walton. If you have not yet seen it, by no means neglect the chance--and even if you have, it would probably be worth a second viewing.

Cinema

The Years Between--At the Exeter Street Theatre. This is the latest production of British film mogul J. Arthur Rank, but it has very few of the usual attributes of English pictures. Written by Daphne du Maurier, it concerns an R.A.F. captain who is presumed dead in Europe for four years, then returns in Enoch Arden fashion to friends and family. The story is told haltingly and with an overdose of sentiment, but Michael Redgrave does a fine acting job. The co-feature, Russia On Parade, is a one-hour bore about Russian "sports"-lovers.

Margle--At the Keith Memorial. If you want to reminisce about the heydays of the Twenties, this is the way to do it. Starring Jeanne Crain, it tells the story of the Stutz Bearcat and the raccoon coat--on the nostalgic level it wins, but as entertainment it is just too close to the senior high school play to keep you in the theatre for long.

Nobody Lives Forever--A new crime thriller, featuring John Garfield and Geraldine Fitzgerald. At the Metropolitan.

Two Years Before The Mast--At the Paramount and Fenway. The famous Dana novel about life on shipboard, made into a long and brutal film. If you can stand more than an hour of South Sea cruelty on the high seas, you might be able to suffer this--but even discarding the brutality, it has lost most of the documentary qualities of the original in the rush for melodrama. Alan Ladd and Brian Donlevy star.

Brief Encounter. At the Tremont. A fine motion picture, made by Noel Coward from his own one-act play, "Still Life." It deals with the love tragedy of two middle-class English citizens who meet in a railroad station and develop their "star-cross'd" relationship from there. Coward employs the technique of the dream, combined with fine photography, to achieve remarkable success.