CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
,4 Sauce Piquante." (Cambridge.) ALTHOUGH I cannot claim to have made a study of these entertain- ments, I have the impression that the British are—or perhaps it would be more anthropologically accurate.to say that London is— better at staging revues which are intimate than revues which are
not. Sauce Piquante belongs to the latter category. It is lavishly mounted, expensively and often very well dressed, it has a certain style ; but it has no wit and very little humour. Similar deficiencies, in similar contexts, have in the past been glossed over by the personalities and attainments of the leading performers ; but at the Cambridge nobody quite carries the guns for this. As Rumanian folk-dances give .place to a Spanish ballet, as a parade of beauties in an artist's studio is followed by a sentimental song about London with Big Ben presiding over a tableau vivant in the background, we have the impression of munching a sandwich in which the stratum of foie gras or of bloater paste makes only perfunctory intervention between bread and bread.
In the bloater-paste department Miss Joan Heal is easily the best of the comedians, for Mr. Douglas Byng is vulgar without being particularly funny and Mr. Norman Wisdom, though he clearly has some comic gift, displays it in an, uncertain and rather enigmatic way. Most of the foie gras should have been supplied by the writers of sketches, but, except for a moderately amusing skit on A Streetcar Named Desire and Mr. Mark Baker's " A La Carte," there was nothing fiery much in this line. Miss Muriel Smith sang, very finely, some unmemorable songs, Miss Moira Lister did her best with rather poor material, and various people danced with vigour and grace. A number of handsome young ladies, among whom Miss Audrey Hepburn and Miss Aud Johansen, particularly distinguished themselves, made frequent and always welcome appearances. But I think you would have to be a very tired busi- ness-man to be altogether pleased by the evening's entertainment.
PETER FLEMING.
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