CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
A Question of Fact. By Wynyard Browne. (Piccadilly).—The Orchard Walls. By MANY F. Delderfield. (St. Martin's). MANY people who saw and enjoyed Wyn- yard Browne's last play, The Holly and the Ivy, a highly respectable work dealing with what are called " human problems," will be glad to know that A Question of Fact repeats the mixture. The problems are cer7 tainly there : What does a wife do on dis- covering that her newly married husband is not merely an adopted son, but that his real father was a convicted murderer ? What does the husband do under these circum- stances, if he is a schoolmaster who dis- approves of psychopaths in the classroom ? The answer is, of course, that at first they don't do anything except walk up and down snapping at one another, then they look up the husband's real mother, then the hus- band wants- to resign his job, and finally (not altogether unexpectedly) love conquers all.
This is a ‘grimmer theme than the earlier play which mostly dealt with the return of a prodigal daughter, and consequently it is not so much of a tear-jerker. But the unease, the suspicion even, created by the discovery of Paul Gardiner's real parentage is suggested very skilfully against a back- ground of traditional English behaviour that makes murder seem vulgar and incon- gruous. It is so middle-class, as his mother- in-law says. The play's main defect is that the first act and a half moves rather slowly. There is too much pacing and sudden freez- ing with a glass of sherry in the hand and a hurt look in the eyes. The second half of the play is much better than the first, and I suspect that this is because Gladys Cooper is on the stage. Miss Cooper, as Paul's real mother, brings a touch of reality and brisk- ness into the play. Just as we are getting fed up with all these doubts and ditherings, she arrives to give expression to our feelings. Moreover, she brings the production down to earth. Paul Scofield and Pamela Brown are not altogether convincing as the school- master and his wife. In a play written in a realistic convention their potentially tragic disquiet is insufficiently muted. What on earth does a schoolmaster who lives so much on his nerves do with the lower fifth ? Miss Brown does not look in the least as though she were interested in the dresses for the school play. The atmosphere of English family life on the rack, which Mr. Browne knows so well how to create, is dissipated, and only Miss Cooper takes the situation in her stride without giving herself airs about it. As always, it is a pleasure to watch her acting.
R. F. Delderfield's new play is a story of young love. A schoolboy and girl fall in love with another, they are thwarted by the girl's mother, watched over and sympathised with by her enlightened headmistress, who has her own emotional problem to resolve in the course of the play. This is a serious subject, seriously treated, but it comes out as rather a light-weight play. Valerie White is good as the headmistress, and Gillian Lind as her rebellious second-in-command. The production is a bit too slow, though this
may be the fault of the play itself. It should have been a good evening's entertainment,
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