Despite the widest spread advance interest since "The Tempest," and despite the return of Robert E. Sherwood and Spencer Tracy after five and 15 year absences respectively. "The Rugged Path" somehow contrives to bring together every known cliche and outworn situation known to the American stage.

Every character is a well known symbol--the befuddled liberal (Tracy), the reactionary clubbish business man, the intellectual Jew, the American Legion bartender. The dialogue has been so widely used it should be a familiar acquaintance of every theatre goer the eulogy on the meaning of democracy, the reminiscence over 'how we first met," the confused self-analysis while wandering in and out of a maze of chaises lounges.

Using a plot adapted from a good many movies and plays, chiefly "The Searching Wind," Robert Sherwood has, as is his went, a moral for Americans. He has changed his views somewhat in the past five years. His last play, "There Shall Be No Night," praised the valiant Finns in their struggle against tyranny; "The Rugged Path snarls at business men who decry lend lease to the Soviet Union.

After a vocal first act, Sherwood fills his finale with action packed thrills and suspense. Spencer Tracy, once a vaccillating editor, joins the navy and finds himself a cook on a destroyer in the midst of a South Pacific naval fracas.

The stage is blacked out and a voice blares over a microphone a garbled account of the battle closing with cries of "Abandon ship!" interspersed with sounds of seawater burbling into the hold.

Tracy's Odyssey leads him to the Philippines, where he serves as a guerilla and analyzes the United States for a group of awe-stricken natives under pale blue lighting.

Sherwood feels his "message" is an important one, and it probably is, but in delivering it he confounds his own purpose by befogging the moral in a mistake in two acts.

Greying Spencer Tracy, not equipped with a memorial role, gives no more than a mediocre presentation of his copy-righted role as a Gaelic and crusading, if mixed-up, newspaperman.

Tracy made news yesterday by announcing his intention to leave the company at the close of its Boston run. By an ultimatum of more trial and overhauling or a new star, Tracy may yet change "The Rugged Path" into the play it could be. fps