STAGE AND SCREEN
ait-rEvutt else the theatre in this country may achieve, it crainly makes no attempt seriously to reflect or comment upon eat national crises. In this war, as in the last, no writer, established or otherwise, has chosen to face existing issues in a play. But perhaps the theatre's role in wartime is primarily to satisfy the desire for a few hours' escape from realities ; Forty-Eight Hours Leave is certainly designed for such a purpose, mid with equal certainty is unsuccessful. Although most of the principal characters wear uniforms, and although the black-out curtains have some part in the complications of the plot, the play is in essence the same old bedroom-story with which play- goers have been familiar for many, many years. We are presented with a batch of aristocrats in a large country house, none of whom are overburdened with morals or intelli- gence, and who are all involved in the attempts of a domineering mania to compromise her son and his wife in such a way that their divorce-proceedings will be rendered useless.
This sort of thing needs doing extremely well if it must be done at all. If it is treated as a comedy it requires wit, and there is no wit in Forty-Eight Hours Leave (to allow one of the players to refer to Lady Windermere's Fan was surely a tactical error) ; if it is to be treated as a farce it needs at the least a ast-moving succession of improbable but amusing incidents, whereas, with the exception of a few moments in the bedroom scene, Forty-Eight Hours Leave moves with a majestic slowness which is only partly due to the production.
It is always a lively pleasure to see Dame Irene Vanbrugh, even when she is attempting to make bricks without straw; but in this case it- is a sad waste of acting talent. She is gamely supported by Lydia Sherwood, Andre Van Gyseghem, Martin Walker, and Sebastian Smith—the last-named giving the only human touch to the play as a down-trodden nocturnal slug- catcher. It is presumably the dullness of the dialogue which causes the entire cast to screarh their lines at the top of their
Previous page
