The Theatre

[" Ton CIRCLE." By W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM. AT THE VAUDEVILLE THEATRE. " DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS." BY EUGENE O'NEILL. AT THE GATE THEATRE STUDIO. " THE VENETIAN." By CLIFFORD RAX. AT THE LITTLE THEATRE.] Usum.i.v a decade is time enough to " date " a play that illustrates contemporary manners in a period of rapid pro- gress "----or movement. But most of us believed that The Circle would emerge unfaded. We remembered it as Mr. Maugham's masterpiece. I think that, on the whole, it remains what it was in 1921. The cynic (as sentimentalists call the bitterly truthful writer) survives. He gets a good start— a little in advance of his age, since he ignores its pseudo- moral prejudices.

One felt, indeed, the other night, that a certain hard brightness in Mr. Maugham's wit was too deliberately prepared, and punctuated too mechanically by pauses for laughter ; that his jokes were uneven in quality. One regrets that a well-bred woman in " high life " is forced to confound Sheraton with Sheridan in the manner of Mr. and Mrs. Boffin. And, morals having marched on or down, one wondered whether the elopement of 1931 would really be such a hopeless plunge out of good society, as it was when the young married woman and the young business man (Malay States) took it together, ten years ago. A little " make up " on the play's surface perhaps— not so thick as the rouge upon Lady Catherine Champion- Cheney's face.

You may remember that she bolted, years and years ago, with Lord Porteous, now petulant, fretful, a prey to his own " little ways " ; while she, with her flaming hair (in Miss Athenc Seyler's wonderful reconstruction), has watched her romance turn into a job without illusions—unless you like to count it one that she continues her pitiable struggle with the lipstick. But no !—even that, she admits, is more of a comfort than a conviction. She uses the " article of toilet " as a conjuror his wand. Like him, she knows it is for show. Who can forget Miss Lottie Venne in this part ? Yet Miss Seyler miraculously replaces the older, plumper, more placid actress ; adding a flimsy pathos to the situation. Tragic comedians, these two—. Mcredithian personages, like those who hover at the opening of Richard Feverel as a caution to rapturous lovers. And we still have Mr. Allen Aynesworth's masterly performance of the antiquated beau.

But the next generation ? Who ever compelled it to heed advice ; even though conveyed in the flesh, so to say, and by incarnate illustration ? " Times have changed," they say, " and we shall do better, where everybody else has failed. We bolt in a car, instead of in a brougham. We shall not be caught so easily by Destiny who travels in a mythological outfit." They go off ; and so sincerely doj Miss Celia Johnson and Mr. Peter Hannen play their demure love-scene that we hope—we almost believe—thatthey may reach a non. moral Arcadia. Another ten years, twenty years, hence ?

We refuse to consider it. " Circles" are geometrical delusions. Besides, like Lady Kitty and Lord Porteous, we love the beginning of a romance.

That Mr. Peter Godfrey can vary entertainment, if he chooses, is proved by his swift passage from a burlesque

revival of Little Lord Fauntleroy to one of Mr. Eugene O'Neill's gloomiest tragedies. I preferred Fauntleroy, which was re-animated by that extraordinary artist, Miss Elsa Lanchester

—our nearest equivalent to Polaire. A taste for buoyant normality (example, Maurice Chevalier) seems to have killed the old music-hall popularity of " eccentrics." Or why are not a dozen managers competing for " turns " by Elsa Lanchester ? . She is unique.

Censorship _permits Euripides' Hippolytus ; forbids Desire Under the Elms. Here Phaedra appears in the guise of a New England farmer's second wife—a finely restrained performance by Miss Flora Robson. And Greed under the Eaves might be a better title for the modern version, since the peasant farmers, harshly presented, are moved by avarice

as much as by " desire," as they mutter and squabble in and out of their wooden shanty. Maupassant originally made them. Mr. O'Neill merely emphasizes their pcisseasive- -ness, inserting an improbable tale of the stepmother's sacrifice of her child in the hope of regaining her lover's body and soul. His farm, his mother's methory, and his stepmother's

person, make an ugly havoc in the young man's muddled mind. An ugly play, too, straining- for tragic effect out of arranged, abnormal incidents.

I could write columns about Mr. Bax's historical plays. This week I have space only to urge people to go to The Venetian, before it is too late. Its beautiful " set," by Mr.

Peter Bax (with curtains by -Mr. Stephen Tomlin), make it a joy to the . eye. And there are the exquisite costumes,

and a plot that, with certain waverings, holds attention closely. But the real interest—or theme for disquisition— is Mr. Bax's choice of an anti-Wardour Street idiom for

his dialogue. He nearly succeeds in giving us back a romantic drama disburdened of tedious " poetry." Yet often he falls half way between the Shavian manner of Caesar and Cleopatra, and the metaphorical gush of a schoolgirl restrained by a fear of being too fanciful. At best his dramatic prose, judiciously " cut " in representation, is an admirable invention. though his hold upon character is less secure.

His heroine, Bianca Cappello, is to me obscure—dramatically. (Never mind what she may have been in history.) She begins as a Venetian flapper of ardent and reckless tempera- ment, " throwing herself away " (as Mr. Bax might have made her say) upon a low-bred Florentine youth. She must soon have learnt to despise him - yet seems to be convulsed by an amorous agony when he is killed. Mean- while, she talks much of her ambition and appears to be unscrupulous in pursuing it for herself, her greedy brother, and her son by the Florentine. What is her real feeling for Duke Francesco whom she uses, yet apparently respects ? She poisons herself when he is accidentally poisoned. In remorse or fear ? A woman of action, she can maunder with a Platonist of the period, Malespini, a poet. I do not wonder that Miss Margaret Rawlings . had some difficulty with this Bianca, though the actress made a brave attempt to reveal a living creature.

In Socrates, Mr. Bax deliberately ignored movement, and all conflict but that of ideas. In The Venetian he displays

a fine sense of both. I hope that this play will, not vanish

abruptly as so many others have done in recent weeks. For if it succeeds, Mr. Maurice Browne. may give us an oppor- tunity of judging Mr. Bax's Tudor period in The Rose Without a Thorn, or his early eighteenth century in The Immortal