CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
Dear Charles. By Alan Melville, after. " Les Enfants d'Edouard " by Marc-Gilbert Sauvajon and Frederick Jackson. (New.) ALL'S grist to the comic mill that grinds down the proprieties, but the quality of the meal still depends on the miller. The joke of Dear Charles goes in coarse and, thanks largely to Miss Yvonne Arnaud, who knows superbly what she is up to, comes out fine. This is to be applauded, but from another point of view it may also be regretted ; for this successful comedy, to which none can sew the shadow of bad taste, might have been, complete with that dangerous attachment, a still more successful farce.
Consider the joke. Denise, a middle-aged and successful writer of luscious novels, has three grown-up children, each the abiding token of a different transient love. The likeness of dear Charles - which hangs on the wall, and wlSch the children have always taken to be the portrait of their dear deceased father, is only an old picture picked up by Denise in a second-hand shop for the price of the frame. But now the truth must out, for the two eldest children have announced their intention of marrying into the Duchemin family, noted for extreme respectability as for extreme wealth. The children take the news in their stride and continue to agree that maman is wonderful. (So do we, for Miss Arnaud, a Frenchwoman embody- ing in a manner thoroughly French an English idea of a French- woman, is in every way the mistress of the situation.) Denise decides that she must acquire a father for her brood. Telegrams summon the three lovers of bygone years from three corners of the globe so that they may be fairly, squarely and democratically faced with the facts. They turn up dutifully on the dot : Sir Michael, a portly St. Jamesian bore • Jan Letzaresco, a Polish piano-thumping charlatan • Dominique Lecler, a quiet Fi enchman who does nasty jobs on the side for oil-magnates and the like. (It was in the course of such a job, jn a hotel in Rome, that he had his brief but not fruit- less encounter with Denise so very long ago.) The thin, sharp nose of farce has long since poked its nose into the proceedings (and the plausibility which comedy demands has been abandoned gaily), but its presence is openly acknowledged only by Mr. Charles Goldner, whose performance as the Polish virtuoso of the pianoforte and the tender passion is no less spirited than the lines provided for him by Mr. Melville. Which of the three will make an honest woman of Denise ? Denise is not fussy : it is a matter of convenience. Each of the children decides on his or her own sire. The fathers themselves are equally unyielding in their claims on Denise. The resolution of the dilemma keeps everyone busy during the third act, and by an effort which must be called superhuman, although there is not the slightest sign of strain, Miss Arnaud sustains the mood of high comedy right to the finish. Although it might have been written with her very special talents and mannerisms in mind, Dear Charles cannot be described as an easy success.
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Nor can the pleasant trifle that brings a breath of life to the Comedy Theatre and, pouting, puffs out of it the malevolent ghost which has lingered there too long. What happens when a couple marry on £5 a week and set up house in a flatlet—i.e., one all-purpose room with the sink and stove in a recess ? This and that. Miss Geraldine McEwan fusses and squeaks beguilingly among the crowded furniture, and Mr. Leslie Phillips sits down at the table to puzzle out the secret of solvency, and the first little dinner-party goes wrong, and there is a misunderstanding with the (really nice) couple upstairs, and the man from the hire-purchase company comes to take away the furniture, and the bride's parents turn out to be jolly decent. The play itself is a neutral grey : one can hardly imagine its existence apart from the perfortnances. These, happily, are exceedingly pleasant (what a big company for such a tiny play !), and Mr. John Counsell's production is, like the acting, so very able that the naiveté of it all becomes by some carefully calculated miracle positively charming instead of negatively inoffensive. 1 shall certainly dap when Tinker Bell puts her question.
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I should like to conunend Mr. Francis Dillon's dramatisation of the Grimms' fairy-tale to anyone with a child to entertain. The princesses pursue their dreams and the princes who fail to pursue the princesses have their heads chopped off ; but honest Sergeant Dickon breaks the spell and wins the royal award. It is perfectly plain that he and Princess Cherry will be happy ever after, and that is the best of all magic. Children are sure to appreciate the dream-
like mingling and alternation of fantasy and matter-of-factness, and their parents may, at the intervals, while small mouths are stopped with caramels and ice-cream, wonder why Cocteau as film-maker
has not yet been tempted. LAIN HAMILTON.
Jack and Jill. By Emile Littler. (London Casino.)
The pantomime based on a nursery rhyme generally has even less story than the one which tells a fairy-tale, but Emile Littler's Jack and Jill shows no sign of the shortage. Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary and the Crooked Man who went a Crooked Mile are brought in to reinforce the bare fact that all Jack and Jill did was to go up the hill and fall down again. A question affecting the succession to the throne of Sylvania thickens the plot in the second act, and in the end the nursery rhyme of eight lines supports a spectacle lasting three hours. Not, of course, without certain strayings from the text to display dwarf tumblers, acrobatic dancers and a strange trio who make music by hammering lumps of stone ; but such detours do not last long and we are soon back to the proper business of pantomime —the disastrous papering of a room, the smashing up of the kitchen dresser, the principal boy (Hy Hazel!) strutting about elaborately dressed from neck to hips, the Dame (Tommy Jover) showing that fashions in comedy are more lasting than fashions in underwear, Charlie Chester achieves a cheerful repose which should lull even the most up-to-date child into acceptance of a story without any bearing on interplanetary navel, and Michael Bentine (though he has no space gun) will lead them even deeper into a world of imagina- tion. No maiden aunt need fear that if she takes her nephew to this Jack and Jill she will have to ask him to explain any of the jokes. The only vulgarities it has are perfectly legitimate ones—which is more than can sometimes be said for pantomime nowadays. C.F.
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