CONTEMPORARY ARTS
.THEATRE
Who Is Sylvia ? By Terence Rattigan. (Criterion.)
SYLVIA 'is, really, a wistful memory, the haunting and indelible image of a girl whom the Earl of Binfield—then a stripling viscount at a tennis- Party—kissed in the shrubbery and never saw again. At intervals throughout his career as a diplomat Lord Binfield comes across maidens who, outwardly at any rate, repersonify his early love ; and his pursuit of them obliges him to lead a double life, based on a series of precarious impostures and a flat in Knightsbridge. We are admitted to this apartment in 1917, 1929 and 195o, and in each case (though least in the last) the experience is exhilarating and delightful ; - for although this is not, strictly speaking, a very good play, it is an extraordinarily funny one.
Lord Binfield himself is not a particularly interesting character, though Mr. Robert Flemyng plays the part agreeably ; nor can Miss Diane Hart,- thrice reincarnating Sylvia, excite very much more than admiration for her virtuosity and an archaeological interest in her wardrobe. But Mr. Robert Culver, as an officer of the Font Guards, has and takes the chance to give a most distinguished exhibition of comic acting ; it is a splendid part, beautifully played. Mr. Esmond Knight as a loyally equivocal butler- c Mr. Roger Maxwell as a colonel who has married into the chorus : Mr. David Aylmer as Lord Binfield's son : Miss Joan Benham as an unusually silly girl : and Miss Athene Seyler, whose Lady Binfield brings down the curtain with adroit urbanity—all these make the most of the opportunities with which Mr. Rattigan's wit and discernment (and, incidentally, his sense of non- sense) have supplied them. But I thought Miss Diana Allen's brief appearance was, after Mr. Culver, almost the most enjoyable thing in the play.
Mr. Quayle's production is admirable, save for a small, strange lapse in the third act, when Lord Binfield's son sits on the arm of his father's
chair in a dreadfully implausible manner. PETER FLEmiNp.
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