THE THEATRE
The Circle of Chalk." At the Arts Theatre.
Dus English version by Mr. James Laver of a drama adapted from the Chinese is a revival of a play, which had some success before the war, in which the well-known film actress Anna May Wong appeared. It seemed much to the taste of the audience chiefly, I think, because it borrows some of the conventions of the Chinese theatre, and mixes them adroitly with a touch of Grand Guignol technique. It is also nicely sentimental, being the story of a father- less young maiden who is sold by her destitute mother to the proprietor of a tea-house, where she joins the other geisha girls, and is bought by a rich man. She gives him a child, and behaves with such exemplary patience and devotion that his chief and childless wife becomes jealous, and, finding it impossible to destroy her husband's affection for his new wife, poisons her husband and throws the blame on the geisha. Miss Wyienne Bennett gives a sympathetic performance as the geisha, while the wicked wife was given full dramatic villainy by Miss Rosamund Greenwood. The play is really a thriller, with Chinese decorations, but the decorations are of a sort of Wardour Street provenance, and bear little relation to the true qualities of the Chinese stage, consisting chiefly, in borrowing the convention of each actor announcing who he is on
Previous page
