Like so many comedies of recent vintage, the offering this week at the Wilbur is concerned with marriage and executed in the breezy fashion popularized by Noel Coward. Henry Hull parades around in a water-soaked derby, a full dress suit, and a baby-pink blanket in a manner that would make Alfred Lunt gasp in admiration.

Combining the marriage, divorce, and remarriage plot that made "Private Lives" such a delightfully uncertain nightmare, "Springtime for Henry" also introduces the libertine bachelor caught in the threes of "a pure love for a pure woman." There are some really excellent opportunities here for wit, satire, and unrestrained nonsense which Benn Levy utilizes to their full possibilities. Free from the elements of moral responsibility, and the philosophy of Bortrand Russell which ruin some very effective comic situations in "Cynara," this farce is not diluted with any common-sense at all.

Mr. Dewlip's conversion from excessive drinking, love-making, and idling, by his demure, straight-laced stenographer is made even more ludicrous when by chance she reveals to the smitten Henry that she has murdered her husband, for having his mistresses for tea, a custom which would eventually cause drastic changes in the demand and supply of tea in France. Finally, to the gratification of Dewlip's best friend, Jelliwell, he goes back to an amicable relationship with Mrs. Jelliwell, for which he can scarcely be blamed, while the stenographer and Mr. Jelliwell, who have been misinforming each other, decide they will have a fling at the old game, and run out to be joined in holy wedlock.

Although light comedy is awfully good fun for the middle-aged audiences, one rather wearies of the eternally gay manner in which so many young sophisticated married couples trifle with the monogamic marriage.

Henry Hull is the same flawless actor he was in the stage version of "Grand Hotel." Every gesture is expressive, every look, significant. He is as much of a born actor, and arch rogue as John Barrymore. He carries off the part of the dilletante bachelor as well as Alfred Lunt were the uniform of the exiled Prince Rudolph Maximillian Von Hapsburg. But "Springtime for Henry" lacks the gay flavor and dramatic excitement that made "Reunion in Vienna" one of the most popular of the Guild offerings in the last two years.

Without doubt the play has suffered by the loss of Frieda Inescort, who played with the show for 25 weeks in New York, and is now engaged in the title role of Rachel Crothers' latest success "When Ladies Meet." Edith Atwater, Helen Claire, and Eric Blore, however, give a finished air to the production. Madge Kennedy would have been very much at home as Mrs. Jelliwell.

As a delicious tidbit of pure nonsense "Springtime for Henry" will secure larger audiences than greeted the farce at its Boston debut.