Fay Bainter, who is chiefly noted for her faithful movie performances as Mickey Rooney's mom, is a handsome doting mother who keeps house for a far more annoying son in the Plymouth's new play.

The son, Gayden, is tall and blond; he wears a sufficiently causal blue blazer, drapes himself expertly on a mantelpiece, and quotes poetry on the run. He also apparently has quite a past, with dire hints of such escapades as pushing a boy off a roof, breaking the hearts of countless women (one of whom, it seems, subsequently stuck her head in a gas oven,) and driving his college roommate to hanging himself--a Harvard, inevitably.

Visiting this happy home of spoiled son and spoiling mother is a young Pennsylvania girl. Obviously from the southernmost part of the state, Carol Wheeler talks with a drawl that sounds as if she is reading from large block-capitaled signs in each wing.

Gayden naturally makes a dignified pass at the girl, while his mother nods approvingly; but the innocent young thing is rescued by the intervention of Gayden's uncle, a solid-citizen doctor. He convinces the mother (through some dubious elementary psychology) that her son is an "incurable psychopath;" that she should (1) go away, (2) send the son to an institution, (3) kill the boy. Mother relays all this to her son, who jilts the girl, plays up to his beloved mom, and leaves everything up to Bainter, who has no chance to get anything done before the curtain falls.

Actually, Gayden's plot is very much along the lines of the flock of stories growing out of Chicago's famous Leopold-Loeb case, the latest being Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Rope." Most of these were successful because they contrasted the superficially impeccable manners and morals of bad boys with their actual criminal actions. But this boy is so obnoxious, on and off stage, that his nefarious activities are neither surprising nor particularly interesting. Gayden in one of the most thoroughly despicable people to appear on the stage in a long time. He's all right if you're entertained by despicable people, but otherwise Mickey Rooney will do quite as well.