I WISHED, emerging from Ivor Novello's new piece, that I
had a stalling for every time Cicely Courtneidge had been called " indomit- dhle." It is hard to say: " Here she is again," without adding:
" God bless her," for hers is that sort of personality. Nothing has quenched that tomboy zest ; sternly swaggering, she launches her pugnacious jokes and, stipple as a wishbone, sings her intarissable songs, with occasional glimpses of a jolly, dimpled knee. " We have to eat," pleads a long-unpaid employee in the second act. " Really ? Why ? " Miss Courtneidge shouts archly ; and several hundred people laugh. Drawing herself up to her full crouch, she marches into routine after routine, never flagging, sometimes flag- wagging, always with perfect audience-control. If I do not enjoy this, it is probably because I have memories of an aunt who did much the same thing at church socials.
I think, anyway, that she respects her audiences too gladly and too much. Her homeliness, her busy strutting, her taut anxiety to please forbid me to count her a star. She does nothing unpredict- able ; you feel that if she came to tea, she would lend a hand with the washing-up. Now I happen to enjoy being amazed and dumb- founded by top-liners, and when they unbend to persuade me that they are just cheerful comrades I tend to go elsewhere.
This is not to say that Miss Courtneidge does not fulfil a very important purpose. She makes the provincial feel at home in London ; and there is no doubt that the Saville Theatre will be a charabancs' Mecca for many months to come. The plot deals with a retired musical-comedy star who, having robbed a shy young enthusiast of £500 in order to run her acting academy, then turns the loyal pinhead from a would-be actor into a chorus-boy. There is a lot of tiring by-play with gauche students ; but one must bear in mind that, though we know how subtly and deliciously funny acting schools can be, the provinces, with few exceptions, do not ; and it is to them that the fun is directed. In fact, it belatedly occurs to me that the whole thing really ought to be reviewed in the manner of a provincial evening paper: "Our Cicely has done it again, this time under the harness of Ivor Novelle), not forgetting irrepressible Alan Melville, who wrote the lyrics. The star works indefatigably, pleasing her many admirers. Thorley Walters (new to me) wins well-merited applause as the • young man,' being especially uproarious when he pronounces four virgins' as ' four vermin.' Smuggling, auctioncering, tuneful songs and cos- tumes combine in a spectacle to delight eye and ear, in which our own Lizbeth' Webb figures largely."
There is a buoyant romantic number called " A Matter of Minutes," and a macabre quartet of Alan Melville's about the agonies of teaching people to act. KEN TYNAN.
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