"Whirlpool," now at the Hollis Street Theatre, can be classified as a rather weak melodrama whose salvation lies only in convincing and intelligent acting on the part of the two young stars, Doris Dalton, and Shirling Oliver.

Occasional enlivening dialogue and several situations, centering about the telephone, however, add to the effectiveness. But the denouement is completely inadequate and disappointing. The entire audience waited several minutes after the curtain fell on the last act before it realized that the many questions brought up in the course of the play would have to remain unanswered.

Mrs. Wallace Crane, wife of the president of the Hamilton National Bank, shoots a man who comes to see her at her Park Avenue apartment. Margot Hale, an actress, decides to shield her friend, even at the risk of ruining her career. An ambitious playwright, Philip Elton, finds the situation almost identical with the circumstances at the climax of a play he is reading to Miss Hale. The obvious alibi is given to the police--they were rehearsing and "she didn't know it was loaded." A garrulous doorman (who once procured a chiropractor when an obstetrician was needed) arouses the suspicions of the police when he reveals many of the lies Elton has told to explain his presence and the presence of the murdered man in Miss Hale's apartment. Further complications arise when Wallace Crane arrives home to find that the victim is Malcolm Taylor, the one man who could save the Hamilton National Bank from failure. Meanwhile, Mrs. Crane's guilt is discovered by a crafty nurse and she commits suicide.

The production is cleverly presented and well executed, but even these virtues are not sufficient to redeem its faults of construction. Melodrama hath its merits; but a melange of Hamilton Banks and chiropractors never!