THE THEATRE Acacia Avenue." At the Vaudeville.-4 , Le Malade Imaginaire."
At the Comedy.
NOTHING is harder to write than a good comedy, and Mabel and Denis amstanduros, the authors of Acacia Avenue, cannot be said to have succeeded in achieving that unity of style which preserves
comedy from tumbling into farce or melodrama. There is plenty of entertainment, however, in this amusing play of London suburban life for those whose sense of reality, or art, is not so exacting that an awareness of how much better it all might have been dims their pleasure. It is a higher degree of reality which marks off true comedy from farce, and it must be said that much in this play had the bogus slant of the 'too-easily-gained laugh. Stage suburbia is a sentimentalised No Man's Land, in which husbands are more fond and even-tempered, wives more docile and fatuous, children more inexperienced than any who live nowadays in Golders Green or Croydon. Mixed with these farcical simplifications and exaggera- tions, however, are moments of *true observation, and it is a pleasure to see a play which does attempt to deal not only with contemporary life, but with an average part of it. The episode of the projected Mediterranean cruise, long cherished as an impossible dream by husband and wife, and then, when at last within reach, abandoned, with immense relief, by both for their usual seaside fortnight at Bognor, is amusing and true to life. The lov'e-lorn maid (delight- fully acted by Megs Jenkins) is a piece of fresh observation and not a hackneyed stage character ; also there are good moments in the courtship of the daughter Joan (very truly played by Yvonne Owen) by a slightly superior young man (Hubert Gregg), and it was the skill of both these young actors that gave more life to the play in the second and third acts. Finally, Mr. Gordon Harker throughout maintained so sure a poise and gave such a touch of sober reality to the play's weaker moments as to ensure for us an evening of real enjoyment.
Under the auspices of the French National Committee of Liberation, the French Theatre Association is giving performances in French by the Theatre Moliere of 4 St. James' Square, S.W. 1, of French plays on Sunday afternoons, particulars of which can be obtained on application at the above address. Last Sunday an excellent company of actors gave a very good performance at the Comedy Theatre of Moliere's Le Malade Imaginaire, followed by Tristan Bernard's amusing L'Anglais Tel Qu'on le Park. This is a patriotic and cultural venture deserving of support.
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