"Come Live With Mc." By Dorothy and Campbell Christie.
(Vaudes
ALWAYS think of the authors of His Excellency and Grand National Night as unusually reliable playwrights, but their new comedy is disappointing. " New" is possibly the wrong epithet, for this cheerfully mechanical study of the artistic temperament has a slightly faded air, as though the original MS. had lain for several years in a drawer. Maria, the great Polish prima donna living in retirement in Sussex, gives Miss Jessie Royce Landis plenty of opportunities for an accomplished if rather boisterous display of volatility ; and Mr. Francis Lister is drily humorous as Sir Laurence Rossiter, to whom Maria was once (and as it turns out still tech- nically is) married. But we find it difficult to see why he should be so keen on setting up house once more with this maddening woman, and still harder to understand why she should be averse to such a reasonable proposition from such a nice man ; nor can we work up much interest in the destinies of their daughter and the Old Harrovian who, by first seducing and then blackmailing her, wins her affection and respect. To make things worse, a Polish maid and a French chef import from time to time the prefabricated humours of a bilingual servants' hall. Not a very rewarding evening,
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