First let us serve the nectar, and then to take the good taste away let us all have a good swig of Sloan's Liniment. For such is the method of attack, when dealing with a piece such as "The Madcap". The nectar is in the summing up of the performance of Mitzi, upon whose shoulders hangs the entire production. This lady, reminiscent of the Duncan sisters in "Topsy and Eva", is really highly amusing. Regardless of when she was at her prime, presumably before what Professor Merriman chooses to call "the late unpleasantness", she still can put her personality across. She knows how to act, and particularly how to act funny.

In this play she takes the part of a girl, of 20, who has to pretend she is but 12 in order to facilitate her mother's snaring a British millionaire. In the impersonation of the child, there are considerable possibilities, and Mitzi realizes them. The result produces a considerable number of real laughs.

Now for the mouthful of Sloan's Liniment. The rest of the piece is pretty weak. It is billed as "a comedy with music" which is exactly what it is. The comedy is good; the rest is mediocre. The music is fair, the sets likewise, and the rest of the cast passable. The chorus, while executing a few good dances, is such as would most probably offend even the taste in pulchritude of the fastidious patrons of the Howard Athenaeum.

And there you have it. If you think you can be amused (which we were) by Mitzi's impersonation of a little girl injected with a few good cracks, an evening at the Shubert will repay you. If you are a Scollay Square aesthete, or a devotee of Max Reinhardt, you will probably be more contented at home.