My Three Angels

By adding one fat and very funny man to one thin and not so funny play, My 3 Angels strikes a fair average. Sam and Bella Spewack must have chuckled, occasionally, while writing this fantasy of three warm-hearted convicts at Cayenne. But it takes more than a running gag or even a moderate number of good lines, to make a comedy consistently entertaining. Rather than the authors, it is pudgy Walter Slezak in the role of a combination convict, Cupid, and J. P. Morgan, who holds the play's biggest investment in laughs. To him belongs much of the credit for a year's success on Broadway.

Disregarding the fact that fat men are funny by definition, Slezak performs nobly as Joseph, one of a trio of convicts who attempt to solve the problems of the Ducotel family. Losing money at an alarming rate, Felix Ducotel's general store in the French penal colony is soon to be closed by Henri Trochard, the prototype of a heartless capitalist. To add insult to bankruptcy, Ducotel's daughter is hopelessly in love with Trochard's nephew, who can only marry on the pain of disinheritance. At this point, it might be said with some justification that this is nothing new, even under the Guiana sun. Actually, when Spewack introduces the convicts, he provides both a new twist and the play's central theme.

The idea of three condemned men who are better than most of their unimprisoned associate and who arrange fate according to an optimum standard of justice is amusing at least for a time. It provides the convicts with an opportunity to invent a variety of tricks, including mock trials and frivolous discussions of good and evil, in their efforts to save the Ducotels. Slezak, bouncing about the stage in a care-free, self-assured style, is the real mastermind of the group. A superb comedian, he makes gimmicks which might have grown stale seem fresh throughout.

Unfortunately, the supporting cast is not equal to Slezak's level of acting. Replacing the original New York company, his companions betray a lack of familiarity with the lines, and worse, a tendency to overact. Admittedly most of the parts are caricatures, yet they do not deserve the heavy treatment of Paul Lipson's Henri Trochard, or the tiring gushiness of Delores Mann, the immature Ducotel daughter. Slezak's fellow convicts, played by Royal Beal and Carl Betz, seem brighter and more natural.

Somehow, My 3 Angels manages to overcome its handicaps, including a set which is left unchanged for three long acts. The play succeeds because it is Slezak's show, and for that reason, an amusing one. DENNIS E. BROWN