CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
Bonaventure." Ry Charlotte Ilastings. (Vaudeville.)
" VERY flat, Norfolk," observed a charataer in one of Mr. Coward's plays ; and it is this peculiarity of the county to which we owe a preposterous but often exciting play, for such terrain lends itself to flooding, and but for the floods (of 1947) life in the convent some miles from Norwich would never have become so dramatic. The convent stood upon one of the eminences which are so rare in that part of the world, and when the dykes burst many natives, and three strangers, sought refuge with the holy sisters. The three strangers were a police officer, a wardress and a convicted murderess, who, her appeal having been dismissed, was being escorted back from London to Norwich gaol, there in due course to be hanged for poisoning her 'perfectly horrible brother. Sarat Cain (for such was the unfortunate young lady's name) continues to protest hci innocence, in which Sister Bonaventure—and every single person in the audience—firmly believe from the moment they set eyes on her ; and during het stay in the convent (which is prolonged because the telephone lines are down, thus making it impossible to summon from Norwich the police launch maintained by that prudent municipality for cross-country work in wet weather) Sister Bonaventure proceeds to prove that Sarat Carr. was guiltless of the crime for which she has been condemned to death.
The murder, as it happens, took place in a neighbouring village, but Sister Bonaventure, not being a newspaper-reader, knows no more about it than we do to begin with, in spite of the fact that the doctor who attends the convent hospital was a leading witness in the case. However, she soon masters the facts, and by a remarkable feat of inductive reasoning, combined with some ex- ceptionally silly behaviour by the real murderer, is able to prevent a grave miscarriage of justice: whereupon the real murderer, much upset, casts himself from the tower of the convent and breaks his neck, a thing (one imagine;) not very often done in so unprccipitous a region.
The authoress has set herself an unusually difficult task. Not only is the tranquil and disciplined life of a convent a rather awkward setting for a melodramatic detective story, but the police regulations which insist that the condemned woman shall never be left unattended by her warders tend at times to clutter the stage and clog the action. Still, the play, despite some embarrassing crudities in the writing, is good, strong stuff, and is powerfully acted, especially by Miss Fay Compton as the saintly sleuth and Miss Mary Kerridge as the girl bound for the gallows. The pro- duction, by Mr. Charles Hickman, is ham-fisted.
PETER FLEMING.
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