Small ironies are the particular delight of those newspaper columns that deal in news and gossip about Broadway and its theatrical ventures; so it was natural that the most piquant tidbit of the 1955-56 season should have been the fact that Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden, a play which managed at least the success of a five-month run in New York, had been turned down by every major London management before Irene Mayer Selznick decided to produce it here. The real surprise, however, was that Miss Bagnold’s lovely play should have been a success at all, even in a season unusual enough to list Giraudoux and Anouilh among its hit playwrights. The Chalk Garden is too many things that a Broadway hit is not. It is, first of all, primarily verbal, using language with a delight and a delicacy that is foreign to even our most serious playwrights.