The intimacy of the summer theatre and the holiday spirits of the audience combine to make passable fare of such plays as "Little Women" or old fashioned melodramas. If it's melodrama, you can always laugh at the play and hiss the villain when he comes in with the mortgage. "Little Women," despite its lack of a villain and the fact that it is no carefree riot, manages to supply an ample quantity of the picturesque. The story is a childhood favorite built around a family attired in dresses lifted from Godey's Ladies' Magazine and smothered in Victorian ideals and sentiments. There is humor, philosophy, and pathos. The combination means that superb acting and directing are necessary to haul this old chestnut out of the coals.

Considered from a strictly technical point of view, the job was too great for the cast assigned to it. Sylvia Sydney seemed little more than adequate in her portrayal of Jo; she was too sophisticated at times for a sympathetic rendering of a tomboyish bookworm. Amy was the best-played character in the cast, with Edythe Ward giggling and mispronouncing her way to humor and at times adding a human interest touch. Otherwise the cast was decidedly mediocre, except for individual moments too scattered to be effective. Mary Barthclmess, as Beth, was little more than good in her playing of the girl too fine and gentle to live on earth. In this case, however, as in most of the others, inspiration was lacking where inspiration was needed.

Somehow, the acting seemed no more to blame than the directing. Individual roles were at times sufficient, but they were too much isolated from the rest of the play. The plot is pure syrup and the interpretation hasn't prevented it from spilling over. When you should be crying you find yourself twisting a program, and you have to be careful to keep from laughing at the wrong time. The treatment is purely Victorian, as the prologue announces, but the return to candid sentimentalism is unfortunately too much for both the cast and the audience.