Only one person appeared on the stage of the Wilbur Monday night. Cornelia Otis Skinner performed a series of modern and historical character sketches, all written by herself. It may be difficult to imagine an actress holding the full attention of the audience for more than two hours, but Miss Skinner has all the experience and technically perfected dramatic ability to perform the feat without the lightest trouble. In the course of the evening she destroyed 19 different women, and perhaps it is praise enough to say that she was convincing in every one of her characterizations.

In the first half of her program Miss Skinner mirrored women, present-day variety, with an amazing virtuosity. With the utmost case she shifted from the characters to another. She played young women, middle-aged women, and old women; women from Kentucy, Ohio, New England, Sweden and France. All this she accomplished with no more of a costume range than the rearranging of a red beret.

After the intermission she acted her own "The Wives of Charles II." In this series of historical mores she is able to show the character of the Merry Monarch entirely through the personalities of the men in his life. In succession, Miss Skinner played Charles' mother, a Dutch tavern girl, Lady Chartlemaine, Louise de Queroalle, Nell Gwyn, and Katherine of Braganza. As Nell, the London orange girl who became Drary Lane's leading lady, and then in Nell's own words, "danced her way into the royal bed," she displayed much of the good-natured, earthy charm that must have fascinated Charles. The intensity of the next and final scene, in which Charles' melancholy Portugese queen kneels at his deathbed, was heightened by the contrast with the previous characterization.

Miss Skinner, as her own author, has a talented and adroit pen. Her lines are always penetrating, and often humorous. They spring from a complete knowledge of character. In any series of sketches as ambitious as this, there can be no opportunity to build a dramatic structure of any importance. Miss Skinner completely captivated her audience, but her material, by its nature, seldom allowed her to evoke any true emotional reaction. In all probability this will be true during the rest of the week, when different dramas are presented.

Since she has played in these one-woman dramas for more than fifteen years, Miss Skinner undoubtedly knows their limitations. As vehicles for tourde-force acting, however, they are in perfect order. And, as an actress of virtuoso brilliance, Miss Skinner probably also realizes that she could make a successful evening out of a mono-dramatization of Harvard's "Catalogue of Courses"--with selections from "Parictal Rules" as a spicy epilogue.