12 SEPTEMBER 1925, Page 12

THE THEATRE

A FEW SPECIAL CASES

Two plays illustrating special " cases " begin the autumn theatrical season in London. Both of them—Mr. Mordaunt Shairp's The Offence, at Wyndham's Theatre, and Mr. Acker- ley's The Prisoners of War, at the Playhouse—had already been given before limited audiences. We shall see whether these psycho-analytical or pathological studies can appeal to the after-dinner moods of the West End.

Mr. Ackerley's play has the great merit of restraint. He possesses a very remarkable power—for a new dramatist— of revealing his people by brief utterance. He can aVoid dissertation, argument, unnaturally prolonged analysis. These interned officers of his, hemmed in by the " homicidal Alps of Miirren, get on one another's nerves, simply by being themselves. The only tincture of a slight theatricality is the intervention of an all-too-feminine seductress who might( have been omitted had Mr. Ackerley not felt impelled thua to break the fine monotony of his picture of the public-schooli atmosphere, abnormally restored for a time, to thwarted men, who form coteries and bicker, under the stress of their half- conscious jealousies. Captain Conrad's " case " dominates the others. As Madame Louis, the enchantress from Inter- laken, reminds him, he " does not like much the fair sex "- wants sarcastically to know, in fact, which sex that is—and so gives his maimed affection to the male equivalent of an exasperating flapper, named Grayle. And the -worst of it is that, like so many men of his temperament, he cheata himself into the belief that he likes Grayle because Grayle( is " clean." " His life is like an open book." " Hardly worth reading though," as he is warned by his other andl true friend, Adelby, of whom Mr. Ivor Barnard makes 11 living portrait. Was it strictly necessary, thereupon, to( make Conrad medically a sick man ? Is it a fault in Mr. Ackerley's very sincere delineation that he has heightened! Conrad's plight by giving him headaches, insomnia, and fits ; and finally sending him off insane, to watch the evening glow from his balcony ? Would not Conrad's case have been more usefully generalized -without the morbid accompaniment' of high-Alpine depression ? In essence, his was the very( common story of a man loving, but net lovable. However4 his passion might have seemed merely a piece of sentimen4 tality had it not been sharpened by dementia ; and the device attenuates Mr. Ackerley's boldness in making Conrad,; after all, sympathetic—though I am bound to say that Mr.: George Hayes does little to help him in that direction ; harshly„ raspingly, as he plays the part, with too little gradation to show the mounting excitability of a sick soul.

Another sick man was Mr. Shairp's Martin Stapleton; whose mental freedom is obstructed by what the experts' call a " trauma "—since they will call everything ancient' by new names, which, as Walter. Pater used to say of " hedonist," make " such a bad impression on those who don't know Greek." Martin was cruelly punished by an ogrish father in early youth. The curtain of the first act happily veils this scene. But it is Mr. Shairp's misfortune that, in order to exhibit the wound, he has to give us a, rather tediously disproportionate introduction, involving much infantile prattle and Martin's breaking of a valuable, china bowl. In maturity, the poor fellow, mentally dis-t located, is still searching for the causes of his inhibition and fears—his horror of bowls and his distrust of fathers.' He recovers when his , buried complex is revealed to' him. You know the theory. We must be giving our faith to something or to somebody. At the moment, many peoplat

give theirs to the science or art which would persuade us that nerves shattered to the point almost of insanity will be healed, and tyrannical fathers will seem pleasantly paternal, if you reveal to their victims the incident that immediately precipitated a dislike. It is an optimistic theory which Mr. Shairp develops very skilfully, with the help of Mr. Harcourt Williams, as the adult Martin, and of Mr. Frederick Leister when I saw the play—as the father.

Since then, Mr. Leister has begun to deal with another special case. He is the doctor who gives us one of the few credible characters (at the Adeiphi) in a play of the flaming serial type which the energetic MT, Michael Arlen has adapted from his own novel, The Green Hat. A doctor is needed here. An interpreter might have been added. Why does " Boy " Fenwick hurl himself from a hotel window at Deauville, immediately after his marriage to Iris, who made one of the accursed county family of the Marchs—unfortunates who " are never let off anything " ? Mystery ! A maniac in the shape of Iris's brother Gerald (frantically played by Mr. Eric Maturin) shrieks at us that " Boy" was " clean " ; " Boy " had no fault. Another special case, Gerald's, evidently. His view seems to be confirmed by Iris, who murmurs that " Boy died for purity," as the first act ends. Mystery still...

But Iris was apparently in love, not with " Boy," but with II promising, shingled young man named Napier. Why, just ;because Boy killed himself, Iris should have run off the rails, „leaving Napier to get married, I cannot imagine—nor why she suddenly returned, in her celebrated car, to bother Napier and -to lure him to his fall. Her excuse was that brother Gerald lay dying not far off ; and of him it can at least be said that he didn't die for purity. He died of drink. But it is Iris's way to keep constantly snatching at Napier and then dropping him, while she talks cant about the " clean eyes " of his bride. Soon she adopts the well-known stage plan of such " heroines " —she falls ill in a convent nursing-home, in France. This time it is the doctor who telegraphs for Napier ; and we have an absurd Shoreditch-melodramatic scene, in which the night- gowned invalid salutes the " sweet face " of her lover in the manner of the last act of La Dame aux CamEtias ; and then, seeing his wife, whom Napier has tactlessly brought with him, lets him go again—only to make another of her eccentric automobilistic dashes at him in his ancestral home in England, where (third act of La Dame aux Cantinas) she is lectured by his father and begged not to spoil his career. Off she goes again with Napier, after she has explained to the assembled company that " Boy " died because he had a foul malady— died for impurity, in fact.

Have we got rid of both ? No such luck ! A last dash, final mystery. Iris sends Napier back and drives her car into a carefully prepared elm tree. Why ? Only Iris knows. But I was relieved that Napier, in his hot grief, hadn't time to assure us that Iris " died for purity." He is probably telling his wife that now. I gathered, from the loud approval of all the ardent green .hatters in the audience, that this pretentious " movie " drama, seasoning cant with spice, may quite possibly be in for a long run. I am sure it will delight devotees of American films of the dash-in-and-out, rolling-eyed, frequent " close-up " variety. R. J.