Charlotte Greenwood is back again in Boston (and has been ever since Christmas), amusing it, scaring it, singing to it, cavorting before it, and even offering to embrace it. For it seems that dramatic expression is not intimate enough, and after the play is over Miss Greenwood overflows with motherly endearments, sings "An Old Man's Darling" in loud and lusty shrieks, and then burlesques sex in a piece called "Moon Melody," using to capacity her amazingly ungainly person.

The play itself is called "Leaning on Letty," by Wilbur Daniel Steele and Norma Mitchell. It is taken from "Post Road," one purpose of the adaptation being to include the name "Letty," Miss Greenwood's favorite alias. It begins with farce, but before the first of the two acts is over, the spectator learns that he is dealing with criminals plentifully sprinkled in amongst the comics. After the curtain rises again, Letty Madison slowly but effectively outwits the motley gang of variously disguised crooks that has taken possession of her old Connecticut homestead to perpetrate a kidnapping act. The team consists of an unemployed minister, a woman who pretends to bear the baby several days before it is kidnaped, the doctor who attends at the bogus birth, and a nurse. The "mother" gets excessively nervous, so the minister, the brains of the organization, orders her extermination. Previously, however, Letty has announced herself to be the mother of the unhappy offspring, thereby covering the criminals, although she imagines that she is merely sheltering an indiscreet society girl (which is what the "mother" pretends to be) from exposure. By naming the minister as her co-sinner, Letty creates much crude hilarity, since the arch-crook is usually playing his part within a part, appearing to be a stern, puritanical partner of God.

As already intimated, Charlotte Greenwood, amazingly resourceful as Letty, and equally versatile as herself, is the raison d'etre of the show. Con- sequently, her support is rather faulty. Romaine Callender, for example, painfully overdoes the part of the minister. Of course, it might be pleaded that the acting within the acting should not be perfect, lost it cease to be acting. Russell Fillmore and Isabel Withers are good enough as the dim-witted, ineffectual brother-in-law and sister of the heroine. But good or bad, none of the supporting cast matters much. As the revelation or re-introduction of the racy personality of Miss Greenwood, the entire performance is mildly refreshing