Once upon a time Edward Knoblock wrote Kismet. On Monday night his play, the Tornado, written in collaboration with Anthony Blake, received at the hands of the Repertory Players its first performances on any stage.

Kismet was Fate as interpreted to the playgoing public by Mr. Knoblock, and the Tornado is Fate staging a comeback a la Knoblock. But the famous playwright can't leave Fate alone. Determined as he may be when he first puts her on the stage, Mr. Knoblock soon finds that she has the inscrutable ways of Woman, and the public for whom this playwright slaves are not up to the hurdles of the inscrutable.

When he was young, no doubt, his first toys were those aggravating, unforgettable picture puzzles, pieced together at great pains, and taken apart in a twinkle so that the eager child may begin again. His whole consciousness has been colored by these toys, and with painstaking care he puts together arbitrarily Jig-sawed pieces of cardboard until finally the completed puzzle with all its pieces showing stands out in its utter unreality.

Mr. Knoblock has written scores of plays, pieced dozens of puzzles, and his facility is only rivalled by his vacuity. There is a story current that a certain young lady counted the number of lines devoted to the introduction, the development, the exposition, the climax and the conclusion of a Saturday Evening Post story, and duplicated it with a different setting, slightly different characters, and a touch more of spice, submitted the resulting confection, and received a check immediately. Knoblock has found the same royal road to riches.

The setting chosen should have offered Jorgulesco more inspiration than he seems to have derived, for the primary colors of a North African colonial scene are made to his lavish hand. But it is to be remarked that he seems to lack a flair for portraying the exoticism of the unconventional scene with that same facility which he shows in destroying the conventionality of the conventional.

The rest of the production was surprisingly above the Repertory's average. It seemed that the cast shone in their paste and brass setting to better advantage than in any of their platinum and gilt-edged plays of the early season. The triangle which the play required was an acute-angled isoceles, with Guy Phillips, the lover of the lady in the case, flubbing badly. Mr. Jewett, in the role of the ridiculously stupid and irate husband, was not to be surpassed. His whole stage presence lends itself to the role. Miss Taylor struggled with the incredible role of the lady who chose the greater of two evils, her husband, and won the day for the Repertory.

But if the box office continued to force the Repertory to go to the ends of the earth for its scenes, and to the musty files of the theatre for its plots, we shall thank God that some gracious chance has thrown Louis Lean Hall into the best pot-pourri. He, with an artistry unique in that cast, achieves the most fascinating transitions in play after play, from African brigand to English sea captain, from doctor to slave without the least show of strain. Long live his daily bread.