THE THEATRE.
;" CLOTHES AND THE WOMAN " AT THE AMBAS- SADORS THEATRE. A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS BY GEORGE PASTON.
Tuning is a type of play which bears on every part of it marks of having been carefully constructed to meet the demands of the theatre—as the theatre appears in the imagina- tion of dramatic agents and of the consumers of those columns of theatrical gossip which represent drama in a certain section of the daily press. A perfect specimen of such a play is Clothes and the Woman, in which Miss Iris Hoey has now made her reappearance at the Ambassadors.
The author, George Paston, is easily discoverable as a woman if it were not already well known that this pseudonym disguises one of our most successful women—well, I was going to say dramatists, but that would be an exaggeration ; let us say women constructors of theatrical loofah—loofah, as we all know, being the dried skeleton of a certain vegetable marrow. Now loofah is admirable stuff but it lacks marrow ; that is all that is wrong with it from the point of view of getting bodily nourish. ment ; and just in the same way the loofah drama lacks mental marrow. It is dead and dried, and serves merely as a frame- work for acting.
Let us take Clothes and the Woman and examine the poor thing under a microscope. In the first act we are shown Robina Fleming, a woman journalist, typing a story in her rooms.
her rooms are as unlovely as they could well be, and Robina erself, though moderately successful in Fleet Street—she has earned, I think, £600 in the last year—ii less lovely still ; in fact, she is appalling, so appalling that she wouldn't earn Sixpence a year hi Fleet Street or any other street. Never- theless, no less than two smart young men—not very smart but, as Robina would say in her short stories, aagez—barge in or drift in and stay to tea. Are they her admirers ? It is
hardly possible ! One, yes, but not two—or is each of them afraid to be alone with her ? For mark that Robina is incom- petently unlovely, she is not spoiled by nature but by art, she hardly knows how many of her clothes she has got on, and she does not know what to do with her hair, and her inventor has forgotten to give her any personality ! One of the young men brings the girl he is going to marry to see her ; the other, having nothing to bring, nevertheless comes. Presently a doctor arrives, Dr. Lomax, and bullies her in the well-known tender manner of the strong lover who is not sure whether he is in love or not, but who knows that if he finds he is in love he will be irresistible.
Having got all these people on to the stage in a highly expert manner—i.e. (1) by making the two young men journalists less successful than Robina, and (2) by telling us that Robina is " run down " and needs a holiday—Mr. George Natoli introduces a fifth character, a fashionable woman, Mrs. Desmond. Mrs. Desmond simply drops from the clouds, followed by Colonel Brereton. She persuades Robina to spend I forget how many hundred pounds on an outfit and to come and stay with her. Colonel Brereton comes when this is arranged, as it is essential to the plot that he should meet Robins and also that he should know nothing about his coming metamor- phosis.
The second Act sees Robina at Mrs. Desmond's country house completely transformed. Act L was The Woman ; Act II. is Clothes. Here is where we see most plainly loofah instead of drama. Even as a mere man I know better, Mr. George Paston, than to believe that you can separate Clothes from the Woman. Clothes are the woman. A woman expresses her essential per- sonality in her clothes, and the woman put before us in Act I. if she had been real could no more have worn her clothes as she does in Act IL and have all the men in the place swarming around her than the woman in Act II. could have ever looked like the woman in Act L No ; in spite of Mr. George Paston's " and " Clothes and the Woman refuse to combine. The only link in this play between Robins, Fleming and Mrs. Desmond's guest is that they both seem to be Miss Iris Hoey in different clothes. Surely this is dodging the dramatic unities, or one of them—the one that says that the hero in Act L should not be a different person from the hero in Act IL I think it is Aristotle who makes this clear. However, Colonel Brereton and one of our young men from Act I. both fail to recognize Robins and make love to her. Dr. Lomax then arrives—Mrs. Desmond had asked all Robina's friends in order to make it easy for her— and recognizes Robina. This is one up for Mr. George Paston ! There is a scene between them,-Dr. Lomax taking a high moral tone and reducing the poor guest (alias Robina) to tears. She tells her two lovers to come for their answer at Miss Robins Fleming's rooms to-morrow, and then takes to flight.
In Act III. we are back to the Robins of Act L The first lover, the young man, comes for his answer, and is told by Robina—looking awful—that she is Mrs. Desmond's guest. The poor fellow visibly quails. " CAD ! " shrieks Mr. George Paston, and the audience in the theatre reverberates none too sympathetically. Now it is the Colonel's turn. He is a soldier, and after the revelation is made, salutes and mutters mechanic- ally, " Will you marry me ? " Robina, kind-hearted Robina, refuses. The Colonel goes. " HERO ! " shrieks Mr. George Paston. The audience responds more cheerfully. Now the Doctor ; but, of course, the Doctor knows. He is accepted. Good, kind Doctor. But now it is my turn. What am I to shriek—again, not at any real person, but at Mr. George Paston Well—" IDIOT ! " How will that do ? W. J. Italian.
Previous page
