The Theatre
"Somebody Knows." By John van Druten. At St. Martin's.
MR. VAN DRUTEN belongs, technically, to the, slice-of-life school. His latest play is about a murder. Now the slice of life, unlike the slice of bread and butter, is not tied to a pattern ; but murder (on the stage) is. Alone among dramatic themes it has a preordained symmetry. You may say that murders are committed in the theatre simply for the purpose of being found out by the audience. That is their ultimate justification. That is why—however pitiable the victim, however inadequate the assassin's motives—we are never conscious of that sense of waste with which the account of a real murder oppresses us. We connive at holocausts in panelled libraries because, although they are crude methods of arousing our curiosity, they are also sure guarantees that. our curiosity will be satisfied. To be butchered to make a Roman holiday is at least better than just being butchered.
Mr. van Druten, with a courage which is clearly much more than impudence, sets a problem to which, by all dramatic precedent, we have a right to expect an answer ; and leaves it unsolved. Lily Coles is murdered in Madame Malvinetti's boarding-house in Kennington. Lance Perkins, in whom the impulses of a Casanova warred with the repressions of a Galahad, had brought her there off the streets ; had offered her marriage ; and had, on the night of the murder, quarrelled with her when he discovered that she was still plying her trade. Lance is arrested and charged with the murder. The circumstantial evidence against him (like Iago's) " leads directly to the door of truth," but is not quite strong enough to open it. So Lance is acquitted. The murderer's identity is known to only one person—himself ; and since he is none of the characters we have seen, but it shadow of a shadow, a question-mark in the minds of imaginary people, the title Somebody Knows might well, in the last two scenes of the play, be changed to Nobody Cares. But the trouble is that we have cared. Mr. van Druten's slice-of-life methods—the unassuming realism of his dialogue, his masterly use of reticence and understatement, the keenness of his perceptions—persuade us to waive our claims as crimin- ologists ; interest in a psychological study replaces the more vulgar-curiosity proper to a sensational mystery. But there are gaps in the psychological evidence—arbitrary omissidhs which might have been legitimately tantalizing in a thriller, but which weaken the value of a serious play. For instance, was his counsel right in the reason he suggested for Lance's disappearance after the murder ? This was a thing we had a right to know, for it was a clue to the man's character as'- well as to his case. The action of the play was presented in the clear, bright light of ,a candid realism, but the roots of action were lost in the twilight of conjecture. The effect of this was irksome. It should be added that the prologue and the epilogue are superfluous ; they are both written and played in that intensely plausible manner which can be guaranteed to impart a flavour of the spurious to any scene for which the dramatic necessity is not obvious.
All the acting was good, though some of the casting was not. Miss Beatrix Thomsdh gave a flawless performance as the prostitute. Mr. Frank Lawton hardly managed to suggest the duality which alone could reconcile the contradictions in Lance's nature. A man who is both Galahad and Casanova is likely to dramatize himself in one or other of the rates, and Mr. Lawton, though he acted very well indeed, gave us no insight into Lance's personal histrionics. Mr. van Druten's Dickensian prima donna (retired) lacks the worldliness and the hard sense with which experience would have qualified her benevolence ; and Miss Muriel Aked's performance had not the expansive gusto which the part demands. As her daughter, Miss Cathleen Nesbitt acted expertly ; but her sleek and formidable personality emphasized too much the bitterness, and too little the pathos, of Eunice's devotion to her imregard-
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