THE THEATRE
" It's About Time !" At the Comedy.
As intimate revues go this one is pleasant cnough entertainment, although its material differs little from all the other intimate revues. There are the usual sketches, the usual songs, the period piece, and the imitation of the ballet. The two pianos tinkle, the drums rattle away, and the hard-working cast gets through thirty items in good time.
But if there is nothing much to say about the material, there is more to say about the welcome reappearance of Ivy St. Helier, who brings both personality and polish even to such unpromising material as the sentimental soliloquy of a music-teacher. She is exceptionally good as a " F.A.N.Y." of 1917 who has now become a full colonel, singing crisply and regretfully of the female tougheries of the last war ; and as the faded, jaded heroine of an Edwardian musical comedy (a very good item, this, with delicious settings by Elizabeth Agombar), she wrestles wittily and skilfully with a completely unmanageable picture-hat.
Then, of course, there is Wilfred Hyde White, who at last has plenty to do and does it very well. Continuing his sub-acid studies of the denizens of Whitehall, he presents us with a civil servant who finds, on going for his holiday, that he is quite unable to cope with the forms and coupons put out by his own department Immaculate in black-coat and striped trousers, he treats us to another Whitehall ditty, entitled "You must fill up a form to apply for a form for a form on which to apply "—a refrain which strikes a resounding chord of appreciation in the breasts of all and sundry. He also con- tributes a wicked skit on B.B.C. news-reading which would be even better if it kept a shade nearer the probabilities. The rest of the cast includes Ronald Frankau and Renee Roberts, both of them slightly more subdued than usual ; Magda Kim, who is at her best, in the company of Carole Lynne and Beryl Mason, as part of a group of statuary tired of life in a museum ; and Natasha Sokolova, who, with Robert Lindon, contributes the major part of the dancing, including a macabre interlude called "Baccarat," into which seems to have strayed a section of " Comus and all his rout"
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