CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THE THEATRE
','On Monday Next . . ." By Philip King. (Comedy.) ON Monday next it will be the dubious privilege of the Drossmouth Repertory Company to present for the first time on any stage a new and excessively bad play called The Morals of Milisande by a Mr. Sidebotham, whose aunt, one of the governors of the local theatre, presides in the background over this shot-gun wedding between the arts of acting and the drama. It is already Wednesday morning when they start rehearsals, and it cannot be said that these shape well. Mr. Blacker, the producer, is temperamental, the stage manager gives in his notice repeatedly, and the private lives of most members of the cast pass through a succession of crises for which the Postmaster- General, who as far as I could make out arranged four separate postal deliveries to the theatre in half that number of hours, must bear part of the responsibility. Nor is the author of the piece they are at work on very much help, drifting as he does plaintively about the stage, getting in everybody's way and wincing when they cut his deplorable dialogue. It is a safe bet that next Monday's production will be a flop.
On Monday next. . . , however, is nothing of the sort. Boisterously yet wittily compered by Mr. Henry Kendall, the ludicrous rehearsals yield plenty of unpretentious entertainment, and Mr. Philip King is a sufficiently good dramatist to compel at least an indulgent interest In the novelette-ish sub-plots in which the destinies of his less farcical characters are somewhat brusquely unravelled. Miss Olga Lindo lends pathos and distinction to the almost inevitable role of an ageing trouper with a heart of gold, Miss Mary Mackenzie has no difficulty at all in persuading us that Sandra Layton is a promising actress, and Mr. Richard Goolden's moth-eaten dramatist really does seem capable of having written the inane drama of which excerpts reach us from time to time. An entertaining evening. PETER FLEMING.
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