About half way through the evening "The Young and Beautiful" … settles down to work and becomes an interesting play.

Sally Benson has written it from some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories. The place is Chicago; the time is forty years ago. Her major problem is how to make a vain, frivolous adolescent girl a dramatic character…. Josephine Perry is an irritating flirt for about an act and a half. Her charm is small compensation for her scheming, cheating, lying and her greediness about men.

But Miss Benson has something more in mind than another comedy of adolescence. Presumably taking her point of view from Scott Fitzgerald, she mixes a little gall with the romance. Although Josephine is patently outrageous, she is also desperate. Other people may regard her as a spoiled brat who is out of control. But Josephine knows that she is seeking the unobtainable.

In...