22 NOVEMBER 1946, Page 13

CONTEMPORARY ARTS

THE THEATRE

"The Day of Glory." By H. E. Bates. At the Embassy Theatre.

MR. BATES, in his first play, sings of war and its tragic effect on family life, and he accompanies himself on the organ with all the stops pulled well out. We have the elderly colonel suffering from delusions caused by a head-wound in the last war, the young fighter- pilot hiding his natural fears under a mask, the quiet understanding girl who ousts from his affections his former fiancée who simply sees him as a hero, the inevitable Polish airman compounded of charm and grim stories, the waiting mother who no longer understands her son and the younger sister who understands nothing. None shall deny that Mr. Bates writes beautiful prose, and indeed some of his prose is almost poetry, but placed in the mouths of airmen and girls, however understanding, it merely serves to dehumanise them, even though some of the thoughts concealed therein are startlingly plati- tudinous. It is not the fault of the actors that one feels constant gusts of irritation rather than sympathy tickling one's heart. They act admirably, all of them, and yet they do not come alive.

It is true that Mr. Raymond Huntley, as the hard-drinking head- aching colonel who cannot get away from his visions of the duck- boards at Loos, inspires affection, as he always must whenever he appears, but not pity, which the part should demand. Perhaps unjustly one feels that, head-wound or not, his memory of twenty- five years before should have grown a little less intense. Mr. Roderick Lovell, as the hero pilot, is excellent, and brings a fine edge of perception to his part, threaten though it sometimes does to engulf him in nightingales and spring mornings ; and one sees in him that strangeness and separateness which are the prerogative of all good airmen. One understands how, with his hidden fears and his new-found inner self, he turns to Miss Mary Morris who, half priest half nursery-governess, comfortingly digs out every inhibition lest it should " go rotten" in him. The colonel, who a•t any rate feels rotten, also empties his unhappy mind into her quiet keepin.t. So does Miss Gwynne Whitby as the mother who knows she has lost her son before he has died. So does Miss Josephine Stuart as the hysterical sister. Even the Pole, Mr. Gerard Heinz, cannot resist the temptation to unburden his sad soul. Apparently there is something about Miss Morris which leaves no beans unspilled. She has some fine, even beautiful, things to say, and she says them as though they were new and as though she believed them ; but Mr. Bates rarely allows her to be human. In the few instances when she is permitted to feel what one might possibly feel oneself in the same circumstances, she is extremely moving. Otherwise she maintains such an attitude of St. Bernadine wisdom and nobility that one is affected by a grave disbelief in her reality ; and it is a relief to listen to the cast-off fiancée, brilliantly played by Miss Mary Martlew, being extremely annoyed, in a nice normal way, to find herself jilted.

This play should have been a good play, but somehow it is not. The ingredients with which to move one are all there, and perhaps it is a fault in oneself that they do not mix. Mr. Bates evidently writes with deep sincerity, and the seeming lack of life and warmth in his play may be due to the fact that, in one way or another, one has heard it all before, and that one's sensibilities are dulled.

VIRGINIA GRAHAM.