8 MAY 1942, Page 10

THE THEATRE

"Fine and Dandy." At the Saville.—" Immortal Garden." At the Westminster.

TODAY a well-produced revue should remind us, more often than perhaps it does, of the debt we owe to Diaghilev and to Charles Cochran, to the former, olf course, for the Ballets Russes, and to the latter for his perspicacity in realising that both the decor and the choreography of the ballet might be well and truly geared to the purposes of lighter and brighter entertainment In this respect Fine and Dandy is in the true tradition of the Cochran revues of the naughty Twenties, since Robert Nesbitt has had the forethought to obtain the services of William Chappell and Robert Helpmann (both Vic-Wells ballet men) to look after the scenery, the costumes and the chorus movements. So splendiferous indeed are the dresses that the Young Ladies would never find themselves with their backs to the wall, even if their steps lacked originality, wnich, in fact, they do not, Robert Helpmann having turned over several new leaves in the discreet use of the chorus as something other than a precision drill for shapely calves.

This, however, ;aid in a sense, by the way ; we go to Fine and Dandy chiefly to see what. Messrs. Henson and Holloway are up to now. The verdict, I fear, is that by comparison with their previous efforts—notably the famous recital of the "Ballad of Mad Carero "they have not the best of material. Leslie Henson in particular is not given the scope he most undoubtedly deserves, although he shines with his accustomed splendour as a veritable satyr of a ladies' fitter, and as an all-too-deliciously-recognisable member of the Brains Trust. It is, too, in the Brains Trust that Stanley Holloway achieves a major tour-de-force as Admiral Camperdown playing a very straight bat against Professor Uxbridge (Gavin Gordon), Professor Woad (Leslie Henson), and the Question Master (Douglas Byng). Certainly this Brains Trust sketch would make Fine and Dandy worth a special visit in itself, were there nothing else of note. But, in addition to the colour and beauty of the chorus, this revue provides also Douglas Byng's mediaeval eastle and his exuberant Russian peasant woman (this is the cleverest thing in the show), and, last but definitely not least, Dorothy Dickson, singing and dancing with great grace, and looking absolutely enchanting. But Henson fans will, I think, agree with me that he needs more and better material ; he is too good not to be given the best.

Immortal Garden runs to hydrangeas rather than stagecraft, and reminds us all too strongly how awful Dear Brutus would have been if Barrie had not been a superb playwright. It is a whimsey about an aged General whose garden becomes a sort of spiritual concentration camp for souls passing from this world to the next, and a veritable queue of them there are, entangled no less in sentimental pseudo-philosophy than in the herbaceous borders. This type of material must be agony for the producer, who cannot, with the best will in the world, make it move at more than a funeral pace, and who must trust his cast—in this case, with the exception of Arthur Wontner, no more than barely adequate—to attempt to infuse conviction into lines written less for speaking than for private

reading. BASIL WRIGHT.