Last night at the Peabody Playhouse the Harvard Dramatic Club threw a curiously shy Jonah at a strangely talkative whale. Following their admirable tradition they have given us another "American Premiere"--in this case the first performance in this country of a play that has already amused London audiences and will for the remaining evenings of this week amuse Boston audiences. For the audience last night seemed really to enjoy the way in which the Dramatic Club not only brought the Bible up to date but even added a few original touches to James Bridie's text.

A brief Prologue in which the Principal of a Girls' College, Miss Elishba Hupplefeather, admirably acted by Miss Agnes Love, raises with a couple of her charges the question of "Man and his Inspiration" and illustrates it by the story of Jonah and the Whale and the Eternal Father laughing gently at Jonah's anger:

"That sunny Laughter shining through the years

Of hatred, murder, misery and tears

Illumines still the queer old story."

But the old story is made strangely new by unexpected flashes of modern psychology analyzing Jonah's weakness and his strength, by the scene inside the belly of the whale, in which the whale out of consideration for Jonah's position has had nothing to drink, or the scene at the Hotel Baal in Nineveh, where the Lady chairman of the Semiramis Club, a sort of women's Rotary, a part ably acted by Miss Evelyn Stern, speaking of the post-war generation of young people with their fondness for mixed Greek wines and Ethiopian music, calls upon the Prophet from his far-flung battle line to give them all his "message."

Best of all, however, is the contrast which the part of the travelling salesman, acted in a most lively manner by Paul Killiam, offers to the Prophet. It is, of course, the part of the prophet Jonah himself which is the fat part in this entertaining play and Mr. John Weld entered into it with a naturalness and seriousness that were arresting, though perhaps he was a little too mild and good-natured for his vehement outbursts against the ladies of Nineveh or his anger against God when God proved more merciful to Nineveh than he.