" Sarah Simple." By A. A. Milne. At the Garrick
Theatre.
THIS is, once more, Mr. Milne in playful mood, Mr. Milne determined not to let the nursery down, Mr. Milne making certain that London shall have in Coronation week one play unclouded by any solemn thought, any serious idea, any shadow of reality. Admirably staged and acted, this lightest of light comedies seems bound to be an enormous success. A charming cottage in Kent and a forbidding hotel in the village nearby (such a cottage, and such an hotel, as are the substance of dramatists' dreams) provide its settings ; the cottage's dull and stupid owner, pursuing with industry but without emotion the coy relict of a canon, his elegant wife who turns up after running for seven years a successful hat-shop in New York, a farcical waiter, and (to fill dangerous gaps) two precocious children, comprise its characters. None of their actions are credible, but almost all can be foreseen. It violates reason to suppose that a woman who has once tasted the joys of separation from such a husband as William Bendish should take any steps towards being reunited with him, even to spite the relict of a canon. But since Sarah Simple (this is the name under which she runs her shop) appears shortly after half-past eight, and playgoers may not go home to bed until after eleven, we know in our inner hearts that this is in fact what she will do. We know too that though her methods seem likely to defeat themselves by too much subtlety (pretending to approve of her husband's projected union, she lures him, under cover of a false moustache, to her hotel, there to act as the co-respondent whom he will later cite) that by eleven o'clock she will be successful. And it is a little matter that neither then nor at
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