The innumerable curtain calls which marked the first performance of "Pagans" at the Wilbur Theatre on Monday night accurately gauged the excellence of play and players. There are three acts of tense drama happily relieved by a background of delightful humor; the play merits the highest praise.

The plot is a triangle but it is isosceles. At the apex is the charming, magnetic feature of Mme. Morelli, who has followed a thorny path to operatic success. Richard Northcote, artist, half-paralyzed, bereft of inspiration by his separation from Mme. Morelli, and his wife Elsie (married in an absent-minded moment), complete the eternal problem.

The conception of the character of Mme. Morelli was admirable, but its rendition by Helen Ware was supreme. It is the height of acting when a personality crosses the footlights. Miss Ware not only achieved this, but achieved it with a grace and poise which have seldom been equalled. Who would not be a "Pagan"?

Joseph Shildkraut as Richard North-cote represented with mastery the tortures arising from paralysis, a mother-in-law and a fussing wife, and the supreme happiness of finding the great love of his life again. Rarely indeed does one hear exclamations of sympathy from an entire audience.

The conception of the role of fussing child-wife was perhaps a trifle artificial, but Irene Fenwick played it to the last bit. She fussed, and petted, and talked, talked, talked until every male in the audience who had ever been told to put on his rubbers squirmed in sympathy. The Northcote family was the acme of incompatability.

There is a mother-in-law, an individual Watch and Ward Society, a vigorous, tyrannical, assertive, irritating person who spoils the heaven of the "Pagans" by intruding the standard of "middle class morality." As this avowed champion of virtue, Alice Fischer made the wife of the inventor of "McKnight's pneumatic garter" thoroughly detestable. Bill Pratt, orderly, nurse and friend; Doctor Gregory and James Barlow, devoted comrades of Northcote, were ably portrayed by Harold Vermilyee, David Glassford and Frederic Burt.

This performance of "Pagans" must be the predecessor of many. The play appeals to a few basic emotions in a way that entitled it to long-continued favor