The Messrs. Shubert present Fay Bainter in "First Love" with Bruce McRae in a New Comedy badly adapted by Zoe Atkins from the French play "Pile ou Face" by Louis Venneuil. Miss Bainter's gowns, unfortunately, are by Boue Soeurs.

Above is reprinted the first page of the Plymouth program with several unimportant animadversions scribbled on the last page of the program as the opening of the exit doors allowed a breath of fresh air to relieve the tedium of the long-drawn-out importation.

Just as English drawing room comedies invariably deal with monocles and manners, French plays of the same genre invariably deal with manners and mistresses. The present consideration is no exception. Though it may conceivably have possessed a true Parisian twinkle in its French original, it has so suffered in transmigration that in its present form it holds little laudable except the heroic efforts of a good company to bring back the pennies that the Messrs. Shubert inadvertently cast upon the waters.

The first act is in the home of the wealthy Count de Varigny, played by Bruce McRae. A valuable half hour is consumed in explaining that the Count has a son who has left his father's bed and board three years previous to the curtain to write popular songs in Parisian Tin-Pan Alley. Here, the son, Mr. Geoffrey Kerr, has been fortunate enough to awaken with his piano one night the charming Miss Bainter, playing the part of a Roumanian medical student. Thus acquaintance, attention, and infatuation in quick succession. A bailiff with a long name has come to the Count to attempt to reconcile the Father and son, and by the by to collect 7,452 francs that the son owes him. The Count refuses to surrender. Finally for business reasons he agrees to settle his son's financial difficulties if he will within thirty-six hours present himself at a M. Courteil's to marry that gentleman's daughter.

The second act is in the garret room in which live Mr. Kerr and Miss Bainter. It is certainly the best part of the play, though the author takes too much pain to convince his indifferent audience that Mr. Kerr and Miss Bainter are most irretrievably in love through the introduction of 266 amatory forms of address, 33 kisses, and 18 embraces. At the end of the act Mr. Kerr has gone off to marry his Father's choice in a plot to obtain the 500,000 franc bribe and then desert her, while Miss Bainter has gone off to a mysterious Baron "with a car a mile long" who has been writing her tender notes.

In the finale, the Baron, of course, turns out to be the Count de Varigny as a Mr. Hyde in search of unrequited Romance with a green-panelled Elsie de Wolfian apartment for the entertainment of his amatory experiments. After a very tiring tete a tete supper the Count discovers that Miss Bainter is the be loved of his son and there follows forgiveness, reconciliation, and the happy ending, (500,000 francs).