14 JUNE 1957, Page 17

Soaked In Seaweed

Free Air is Obviously calculated to appeal to

the same audience as was enraptured by Salad Days and 1 dare say it is a calculation which will add up very nicely. The tunes are not quite so good or so prolific as before (and .1 wish Mr. Slade .wffcl: hire an :orchestrator with a little imagination). but they have the sane charm. Still, the story is the thing—and it concerns a remote Channel Island full of carefree seaweed-gatherers upon whom civilisation bursts dramatically in the Shape of an heiress in flight from the press and her boy-friend, a racing motorist. In fact it has everything—whimsy, naiveté, and what used in euphemistic Victorian days to be called animal