STAGE AND SCREEN
THE THEATRE
.. Cousin Muriel." By Clemente Dane. At the Globe.
Cousin Muriel typifies the sort of competent, unexciting play which has not got either any particular dis- tinction or any particular fault that one can put one's finger on. One can sit through it without annoy- ance, but after one leaves the theatre it is an effort to recall its details. Miss Dane has nothing much to say, and a story to tell which, though it is good enough of its kind, she seems to have had difficulty in spreading over the regulation two and a half hours. Its central figure is Muriel Meilhac, an unstable and extremely irritating widow who acts as housekeeper to her cousin Sir Hubert Sylvester, a Harley Street doctor, and manages to make a fair profit on the housekeeping by altering the amounts of his cheques. Her son Richard arrives back suddenly from America and announces his intention of marrying Sir Hubert's daughter Dinah. Sir Hubert objects on the grounds that Richard is financially unstable, basing his belief on the fact that Mrs. Meilhac has in the past approached him for sums which she informed him, incorrectly, were needed to prevent Richard's business from failing. On the day of Richard's return Sir Hubert learns about Mrs. Meilhac's financial habits, and it is in terms of the complications arising out of this discovery that the development of the second and third acts proceeds.
The slight but plausible story is very competently told, though each act has its desultory moments when the play seems to be merely marking time. As a whole, the perform- ance was convincing. It was a curious idea to cast Miss Edith Evans as Mrs. Meilhac, and though she displays almost all her dazzling talents, the essential vapidity of the character escapes her. Apart from her, the parts might have been, and perhaps were, written for their performers. Mr. Frederick Leister admirably presents the glum Sir Hubert, Richard is done to the life by Mr. Alec Guinness, and Miss Peggy Ashcroft's Dinah is as accomplished a performance as she has ever given. No doubt only a captious and ungenerous mind could have regretted throughout the evening that these four fine actors were not performing another play.
DEREK VERSCHOYLE.
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