CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
The Innocents. By William Archibald. (Her Majesty's.) .
The Turn of the Screw was a unique story, but this play " based on " it is an ordinary spook sonata of shallow chills and thrills which sets the nerves a-tingle but leaves the mind at rest. Jo Mielziner's settings and Peter Glenville's direction are so deliberate, though, that there can be no question of the transformation being an accident; what is done to James's theme is evidently done on purpose.
The children are anything but innocent, and the governess, Miss Giddens, is temperamentally hopeless for the job. So there is a lot of slack at the start, and most of the screwing-up is left to Flora Robson. The child actress Carol Wolveridge brings to the stage the precision and charm of the walking, talking doll, and something like the same impact, but there are times when her pretty pipings distract the audience so much that Miss Robson has to " ham " the governess a bit to restore discipline. Barbara Everest plays the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, as though she were half the time rehearsing for the sleep-walking scene in Macbeth, and Jeremy Spenser is so self-assured as Miles that we might any day now see him playing Hamlet at the same age as William Henry West Betty, the Young. Roscius, did. But such assurance, such scornful eyes and merciless lips, are not the signs of innocence. Of corruption, rather.
Henry James was wise and artful to leave the evil in the boy's life un-named. Mr. Archibald seems intent on undoing this wisdom and art by hammering away at an undefined but not undefinable queerness, thus making the play again contradict its title and abandon its intention. Still, it is a roaring success in the ghostly way. It gives one of our best actresses a part which is not good enough for her and two of our youngest players the most remarkable infant parts for years. Carol Wolveridge (twelve) and Jeremy Spenser (fourteen) are too promising to be spoiled by such a success. They must quickly play the title parts in Alice in Wonderland and Torn Brown's Schooldays, for if they are ever sinister tots again they
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