Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouce have come up with a new and an unusual variety of theatrical entertainment in "The Hasty Heart." The play lacks the appealing sentimentality of "Life With Father"; it does not have the grotesque attraction of "Arsenic and Old Lace"; but "The Hasty Heart" strikes at deeper human election than have any of the famous partners' former productions.

There is a story behind this play, lying with its author, John Patrick. The scene of the production is a British hospital ward somewhere in Burma. Mr. Patrick has been able to bring exceptional accuracy into his picture of the hospital, and into his portrayal of conflicting characters in the ward, because he was himself a patient in a British evacuation hospital in Burma for more than three months.

Patrick has built his play around a fundamentally intriguing situation. A friendless and unfriendly Scot, wounded badly and near death, is placed in a ward with four congenial and humor-loving soldiers. The other men are under orders to break down the reserve of the Scot and make him "belong" before his death, and the efforts of the four soldiers and their nurse to accomplish this task over the mountainous barrier of the Scotchman's intrespective soul make a penetratingly effective plot.

What makes "The Hasty Heart" a moving and universal drama, instead of the narrow war play it might well have been, is that its author has constructed a clover series of character analyses, without reference to the fact of the war. And Patrick has been faithful, too, in his representation of fighting men. Instead of falling into the fallacious techniques of such productions as "The Eve of Saint Mark," where the speech and thoughts of the men were involved only with the war, he has drawn a portrait of men who are embarrassed, ashamed to discuss battle and its ugly overtones.

Little-known but skilled players create with extraordinary vigor and depth the portraits painted by the author. "The Hasty Heart" is a play of exceptional emotional import, of brilliant and careful character portrayal.