CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
“ His House in Order." By Arthur Pinero. (New Theatre.) A YOUNG wife, made to feel an intruder in her new surroundings— there are few more rewarding situations. We saw it last in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca ; but I cannot promise that His House in Order will appeal to quite the same audience. Pinero, writing in an atmosphere thick with Ibsen and with Shaw's didactic drama criticism, concentrates on the moral implications of his theme with an intensity which lovers of melodrama may refuse to stomach.
Nina, Filmer Jesson's second wife, had entered his house as a governess. His first wife had been a paragon ; and her insufferable family now misses no chance to express its resentment that he should have replaced her with one whom they consider a skittish upstart. The discovery of some letters proving that, for seven years before her death, Jesson's paragon had been unfaithful to him, puts Nina in a commanding position ; and Pinero poses his problem: Should she reveal their contents or, by a mighty effort of charity, burn them ?
It is a moral as well as a dramatic question ; and Pinero, possibly remembering Shaw's homilies about the baseness of sacrificing a conviction in favour of a strong third-act curtain, answers it morally. One of his "dear good old fellows," a sympathetic observer, tries to persuade Nina to conceal her findings. At this point Pinero forgets Ibsen, and dates himself. The action is at its climax ; and what reasons does the " good old fellow " propound to restrain Nina's natural impulse to brandish her discovery in the face of the pious snobs who have slighted her ? He says that, by holding back, she will join those " people walking the earth who are wearing a halo t . . the people who have made sacrifices." He appeals, in fact, to a nauseating kind of spiritual pride ; and Nina succumbs. Whereas your Ibsen counterpart would have said: " Tell him : never mind about his illusions: meet him face to face "; and there would have been a tragic fourth act.
What actually follows is a fascinating compromise, which I con- jure you to go and find out. Pinero is so astute a plot-mender that, unless you read the play last week, you will have forgotten. And his flair for summing up a situation in a single piece of stagecraft never deserts him. Algy's entrance in mourning in The Importance of Being Earnest is not more brilliantly timid than Nina's appearance in flaming pink on the anniversary of her predecessor's death.
Like so many plays by dramatists renowned for their " craftsman- ship," this one hifiges on a supreme improbability. Nina's stepson, who stumbles on the dusty reticule which contains the incriminating letters, is _unable to unfasten the catch ; she herself has it open within two minutes. The entire action, one afterwards reflects, depends on the clip of ttat implausible handbag. The present performance is good enough to throw a cloak over this central failing. Mary Kerridge brings Nina to life with a desperate impetuousness which never founders in pathos ; Sebastian Shaw's nervous urbanity is exactly right for her pompous and fastidious husband—though whether their marriage can ever be more than Mr. Eliot's " best of a bad job " is a matter on which Pinero leaves- us in doubt. Godfrey Tearle, ai the counsellor-friend, cements the play together ; this actor, with his resolute prow of a chin and brave, commiserating eyes, is one of the few who can unfailingly command something like awe. His voice is a moral instrument ; a precious attribute for which English drama since Coward has found less and less use. KENNETH TYNAN.
“The Passing Day." By George Shiels. (Ambassadors.) IF ONE wants to see some acting of the sort which fully convinces an audience that the actor has at all points identified himself emotionally as well as intellectually with his character, acting which rests only so far as is necessary upon technique and never fails to communicate the creative excitement of the actor, then this is a play not to be missed. Those who saw the Northern Ireland Festival Company during its season earlier in the year at the Lyric, Hammersmith, are aware that Dublin is not the only town in Ireland where good actors are found. Others, now that the company is back from Belfast with the best of its three productions, should make the agreeable discovery for themselves. Mr. Shiels's play shows us the last few hours in the life of a shopkeeper fabulously malicious and mean, henpecked by a repulsively puritanical wife and cheated by the wretched nephew who works in the shop for no wages other than a sly dip in the till and the hope that he will one day inherit the business and marry the gipsy-haired nurse he is after. As this most unhappy of misers Mr. Joseph Tomelty gives a comic performance of rare quality. He fills out the character with a humanity which wins over the audience in a twinkling and carries It through the vicissitudes of the merchant's last day on earth to the final scene where, on his deathbed, he has the satisfaction of seeing his wife's face and his nephew's when they learn that of his £40,000 they are to benefit by £5 each.
It may not be the best of Mr. Shiels's plays, but seen in the West End, where there is so much that is immensely well done but hardly worth doing, it has the full pulse of authentic life and an extra- ordinary warmth. Warmth may be a queer word to use of. a play which sets out unsparingly enough a sorry anatomy of miser- liness and malice. But it is the right one, thanks to Mr. Tyrone Guthrie and the actors ; for the satirical element in the text has been firmly, and rightly, suppressed in favour of the comic.
LAIN HAMILTON.
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