Dennis King's excellence as the swaggering handsome baritone here of musical romance a la Vagabond King is well accepted, and now in Mark Reed's "Petticoat Fever," he reveals an unsuspected talent for light comedy. The play itself is a hilariously funny romantic farce which should place a strong bid for the title of this season's comedy number one.

Bascom Dinsmore (in no way related to the famed Elsie and portrayed by the aforementioned Mr. King) has escaped from the cares of London society to the solitude of a snowbound, windswept radio hut in Labrador. This solitude has, after two years, become oppressively complete and Dinsmore seems on the point of yielding to the suggestion of his Eskimo man and accepting the services of a native lady of all work. The unhappy man is saved from this greasy fate by the sudden appearance of Sir James Fenton, noted English sportsman and prig, and his comely fiancee, Ethel Campion. Two years of snow and crawling things have improved Dinsmore neither in appearance nor technique, in fact so pointed is his approach to Miss Campion that the noble Sir James resolves to save his lady's virtue by a mad flight in the teeth of a Labrador blizzard. By this time, however, Miss Campion's invulnerability to Dinsmore's attacks is perceptibly on the wane and when the escape ends in a circuitous return to the radio hut she is easily persuaded that it's a bit extreme to marry Sir James merely because he happened to be around when she chose to do a bit of drowning in Naples. Things are temporarily complicated by the arrival of Clara Wilson, Dinsmore's erstwhile fiancee, but her marital designs are quickly shifted to Sir James and all concludes in highly satisfactory manner.

Mr. King's amusing antics and handsome presence are admirably supported by the statuesque beauty of Doris Dalton as Ethel, the copious blonde-topped charms of Ona Munson as Clara, and tab-collared cinema Englishness of Leo Carroll as Sir James.