STAGE AND SCREEN
The Theatre "Sixteen." By Aimee and Philip. Stuart. At the Criterion Theatre THE scene and setting of this play bear the stamp of truth and a postal district. From the programme we learn that Mrs. Lawrence's mansion-flat is in 'London, S.W. 12 One recognizes it in that area of faded and rather anxious gentility, somewhere south of Victoria Street between the Houses of Parliament and Victoria Station, with its insipid chintzes, its slightly censorious sobriety, its lift that works only when in the mood, its convenient propinquity to the dress-shop where Jennifer Lawrence works to provide a living for herself, her arthritic mother and her two children who are submitting to education in a convent-school. One has the impression that if anything does happen there, it is bound to have catastrophic results.
Much of the play's effect, both as an essay in dramatic expression and as a psychological study, comes from the deftness with which that atmosphere is maintained while catastrophe is averted. Its theme is Jennifer Lawrence's second marriage, and its effect on her two daughters : Baba, the younger, who welcomes it (Sir John Corbett is a com- paratively rich man) with the expectant opportunism of a native hedonist ; Irene, who has arrived at her sixteenth birthday with a falsely idealized conception of her dead father and construes it as an act of violation against the fantasy to which she clings. Resentment against her mother and jealousy of her prospective step-father unseat her reason. She attempts to kill herself, but at the last moment lacks the determination to do so. When she regains consciousness (she had collapsed in exhaustion), she is told the truth about her wastrel father by the family doctor. The fantasy is dispelled, and one is left in the belief that she will adapt herself to reality. It is a satisfactory and credible conclusion.
Miss Antoinette Cellier's portrait of Irene is an exquisite piece of acting ; the child's vanity,' her dependence on her mother, and her jealous agony at what she takes for a betrayal are brilliantly presented. Miss Alexis France's Baba is a lively sketch of untroubled normality, and Miss Fabia Drake makes a credible figure of Mrs. Lawrence. Miss Muriel Aked, with characteristic accomplishment, enlivens the side-issues of this sensitive and most intelligent play.
DEREK VERSCHOYLE.
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