Drama.

MERRILY We Roll Along (Theatrical production); DINNER at Eight (Theatrical production); THEATER; FILMMAKERS; KAUFMAN, George S. (George Simon), 1889-1961; FERBER, Edna, 1885-1968; HART, Moss, 1904-1961; MELODRAMA

George Kaufman and Moss Hart have reputations to be envied. Both singly and as partners they have earned their positions very near the top of Broadway's list. Probably both have grown a little tired by now of praise which monotonously stresses their hard, impudent wit, and in their ambitious new piece, "Merrily We Roll Along," they have set out to prove how well they know that the characteristic vulgarities of contemporary life are not necessarily funny. Kaufman, to be sure, has been half-serious before. The successful "Dinner at Eight," which he wrote with Edna Ferber, was intended to be taken as much in earnest as anything which does not rise above the level of melodrama can very well be. But the new play is more serious still. Its mood is part melancholy, part wistful, and part bitter. First it draws a scornful picture of cheap success and then, turning back, it dwells almost elegiacally upon what might have been. Obviously it is, more than most of what its authors have written, a confession of faith, it may even be, to some extent at least, a peccavi besides.