After 30 weeks in New York, "That's Gratitude," a light comedy with J. C. Nugent and Taylor Holmes, has come to the Wilbur. Starting off with a bedroom scene between four males, it preserves its quality of "clean fun" (as the Parent's League bulletin puts it) throughout. Whether this is to be regarded as a virtue or a final damnation depends, in this decadent age, wholly upon individual taste.

Frank Craven, the playwright, apparently noting this tendency that the Germans are calling "Gemutlichkelt", paces his production slowly and sets it in a middle class home in Kansas. Here the audience is given a lesson in speeding the parting guest. Taylor Holmes is the unwanted visitor who gets the gate. Not only does he have to leave but when he tries to reciprocate evil with good by finding a career, for one of the girls in the family where he had been staying, the girl elopes on the night he had planned to announce his engagement to her.

It was refreshing to see Taylor Holmes once again and particularly in the company of such a congenial player as J. C. Nugent. Being the first night, both of them made curtain speeches which sort of stamped the evening as a real affair.

The punch of "That's Gratitude" depends mainly on the "business" and the ability of Holmes and Nugent to keep the sympathy of the audience and maintain a nice, homey atmosphere. On this basis, the show is a complete success. In fact, its just a clean, action less, drama-less domestic comedy, and, as remarked before this is praise to some folks and poison to others.