21 OCTOBER 1922, Page 22

TIF.F.SE might have been called " Three Plays for a

Grand Guignol." They include two horror plays and a character sketch. The Death-Day Party, by far the best of the three, was accepted for performance but was refused licence by the Lord Chamberlain. We are not quite sure for whom this is an advertisement. The play concerns the coming to life of a corpse in a dissecting room, to the accompaniment of that once popular and sentimental song, " K-K-K-Katie." Happy Days, the second play, is a George Belcher cartoon done in dialogue. Why the author is introduced we cannot think, unless it were to add- half a dozen runes or so to the beery old charwomen's conversation. A Mailer of Temperament is laid in the anaesthetic room of a military hospital during the War. We are shown, among many gory aprons, the murder of her patient (who is also, as it happens, hei husband) by a pale but theatrical nurse. The play suffers from a plethora of charac- ters and speeches. We who were brought up on The Old Women, at the Little Theatre, could not be expected to get a thrill from Miss Petersen's plays.