CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THE THEATRE
Eden End. By J. B. Priestley. (Duchess.) MR. PRIESTLEY'S play emerges with reasonable credit from its revival. There are perhaps times when the sitting-room of Dr. Kirby's house in the North of England—in this production a very crepuscular apartment—seems overcharged both with domesticities and with skilful but not wholly unselfconscious evocations of the atmosphere of 1912; but with Stella's appearance the play gathers impetus, and further momentum is added when the actor she married in Australia turns up to jeopardise the conventional har- monies of a family reunion. The skill with which Mr. Priestley manipulates his characters is more noteworthy than the insight with which he perceives them ; they seem somehow to be prescriptions for dramatis personae rather than real people—highly intelligent prescriptions, very effective, just what the audience ordered, but lacking that touch of waywardness, those occasional incoherences, which might have persuaded us that we were seeing something even better than an extremely well-made play. They are all just a bit too glib, too explicit : the old country doctor who loves bird- watching, the callow boy seeking an antidote to boredom in a bar- maid, the very gentlemanly country gentleman, the second-rate actor who exudes so overwhelming an atmosphere of grease-paint —they and the others are valid and accomplished literary creations, but it is realism rather than reality that they achieve. Only the old Nanny, made inconsequent and arbitrary by age, emerges as some- thing solider than a high-class puppet. But the play remains admirable entertainment, and the acting in this revival is good. Stella, the runaway daughter who returns only to depart again with the secret of her failure as an actress still secure, might perhaps have been a shade flashier and more exotic than Miss Angela Baddeley made her, but this was a fine perform- ance all the same. Mr. Nicholas Hannen was admirable as Dr. Kirby, and all the others did well. Mr. Eric Berry in particular weighing in with a most enjoyable and well-timed display of histrionics as an actor past his undistinguished prime.
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