The Theatre
f" ON THE SPOT." BY EDGAR WALLACE. AT WYNDHAM'S THEATRE. "B. J. ONE." BY COMMANDER STEPHEN KING-HALL. AT THE GLOBE THEATRE.] 1lit. EDGAR WALLACE tells us that he would lilie to dedicate his latest drama of villainy to his "good friends," the Chief 'Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of the Chicago Police Department, "who daily and hourly deal effectively with situations more incredible" than any depicted in On the Spot.
All one can say, in response to that assertion of authenticity, is : " What a world, what Men and women, what a civili- sation I'? In fact, not good propaganda for God's own country, Where the Devil seems to have taken up his residence disguised as a gangster and racketeer. It was ever his way—to ham- string Progress, and reintroduce Pithecanthropus with a grin. But now the once honest unpresuming Cave Man is possessed. of a few score silk shirts and a well7fitted dinner jacket. He sentimentalizes in the intervals of " bumping-off" his enemies, and collapses with a nauseating whimper when he loses one round of the game.
Am I taking it all too Seriously—the sly, sudden murders, the raperings over swiftly concealed corpses, the victimization of loose canting women; the big business of bootlegging on the stage, with the subordinate business of carefully graded brothel-keeping " off " ? Just as you like, or just as you feel. One critic—a woman too—airily remarks, I see, that "it is a long, time since the stage has shown us a more engaging criminal than Tony Perelli," Mr. Wallace's central figure. "Engaging" is good !
Consider this Tony. As Mr. Charles Laughton reveals him, pluturi, Sat; suave, he resides in an Otranto-Gothic palace--; an "ecclesiastical brothel" says the Detective Commissioner who keeps an eye on him throughout—and plays Puccini on the organ, while his richly bejewelled Chinese mistress (the latest) somnanibulistically submits to his bullying and his -caresses: - He hascommitted between seventeen and twenty murders, and whenever he feels obliged, for business or amorous reasons, to send off another victim to be slaughtered, he indulges in crocodile regrets. It is also an " engaging " way with him to smother the corpse with costly lilies and orchids ; so that "it would be cheaper to grow our own flbwers," says his saucy assistant and secretary, Angelo, upon whom Mr. Emlyn Williams very cleverly confers an air of undergraduate innocence and idealism. The remark annoys Tony, who finds that Angelo is growing decidedly "too fresh." For what small sense of humour this Italianate American has is of the sadistic order. And he hasn't any personal pluck. He howls and dithers before an image of the Virgin when he is at last, cornered by Detective Commissioner Kelly—very well played by Mr. W. Cronin-Wilson. The Chinese lady— exquisite creature in Miss Gillian Lind's delicate rendering— stabs herself rather than follow the plump Bluebeard's other " wives " to one of his institutions for the discarded. And the detective, who knows his Chicago juries and "public opinion," knows also that the falsely presumed murder of a roman will stop Tony's career of murdering mere men.
All very engaging, as you see—for strong stomachs. Let me say that the sickness felt by weaker ones is a tribute to Mr. Edgar Wallace's art. Without doubt, On the Spot is dramatically far in advance of anything he has done—with its ruthless touches of degradation in character, its plausibility maintained in "incredible situations," its contrasts in lightly sketched ruffianism. Already, in one scene of The Calendar the steward's room—Mr. Wallace showed that he can get very close to reality. He does that continuously here, with one exception—the weak spot of pity in the mooning Chinese lady's heart for a worthless youth about to die at Tony .Perelli's command. There Mr. Wallace has been mercifully conventional. The rest of the time he is as hard as nails—or ..revolvers. A considerable achievement, but (I think it well to add) not a family entertainment for the Easter holidays.
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How do the minds of theatrical managers work ? We do not know. We sometimes risk the impertinence of guessing. The other night, at the Globe Theatre, Mr. Maurice Browne, who, as you know, is the manager who gave us the apparently immortal Journey's End, gave us also copiously informative programmes free of charge.
Quickly snatching our free programmes, with a thrill of gratitude to Mr. Browne, we sit down and read that Com- mander King-Hall wrote B.J. One in order to amuse himself and "have the fun of a first night." Also "in order to provide employment for as many actors as possible." (There are thirty-three men's parts, one or two of them "doubled "; but no women, so the actresses must wait.) Also, of course, "in order to entertain the public." These remarks display a simplicity of mind really "engaging "—the epithet is appropriate here. Now one trait that attracted us in Mr. Sherrill, the author of Journey's End, was, precisely, a certain simplicity of 'mind—in the best sense. He didn't seem knowingly to know what he was doing or how well he was doing it—certainly cannot have known that his play was (as our free programme informs us) to bring in nearly a million pounds in box office receipts all over the inhabited world. We read about all thiSL with amazement. And, after watching B. J. One, we begin our guessing.
What more natural, we murmur, in the side-long ruminative manner of Mrs. Virginia Woolf, than that Mr. Browne, having won so tremendously on military directness and simplicity, should stake again on naval simplicity and directness. Here, all ready for the fun of a first night, was Commander King. Hall, who shows us two young naval officers, one German, one British, drinking champagne in amity, before the War ; then a bit of the War (Battle of Jutland) in a filmy-talky scene, beautifully staged, but obscure, in detail, to land- lubbers; lastly the same two young officers, now business men fighting for economic co-operation, in a long Shavian discussion scene after the War. Not quite so simple, after all, as Journey's End, because more technical, and at the end "preachy " ; but a gallant effort to entertain and to instruct.
The fault of the play is that it is broken into several pieces. The prologue (with drinks) serves indeed to mark a point repeated in the last scene—with more_drinks : the friendliness of German and Englishman when they are not forced to fight. But the bulk of the last act sounds as a moralising discussion, tagged on as an after-thought, and the coincidence that dragged the two men together at Jutland is improbably repeated. An earlier scene at the Admiralty is well produced by Mr. Reginald Bach. It is enlivened by the delicious sketch of a famous First Lord, contributed by Mr. Basil Loder, whose non-committal quietness beautifully contrasts with the breezy manner of the old sea-dogs about him. RICHARD JENNINGS.
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