THE THEATRE
Easter." At the Gateway, Chepstow Villas, .South Kensington.—
" Appointment With Death." At the Piccadilly. " The 'Gaieties." At the Winter Garden.
ANOTHER active Little Theatre Club, the Gateway, at x8, Chepstow Villas, is doing valuable pioneer dramatic work. I have unfortunately missed previous productions under the direction of Basil Ashmore, but he certainly is to be congratulated on the production of Strind- berg's Easter with a wholly admirable cast, including that ac- complished actor, Esme Percy, as Linguist. Mr. Percy, who so well understands the art of understatement, was occasionally inaudible, even in so small a theatre, otherwise his performance was without blemish. The Elis Heyst of Richmond Nairne was also a piece of highly intelligent and sincere acting, but all their efforts would have been thrown away if they had not had the support of a most moving
and convincing performance by Josephine Stuart as Eleanore. The only weak member of the cast was Kenneth Morgan as Benjamin, but it is an .ungrateful and difficult part. A feature of this pro- duction was the performance, as intended by Strindberg, of Haydn's instrumental version of his " Seven Last Words of Christ" It is an ironic comment on the commercial theatres of the West End, that in spite of their enormously larger resources, they mostly can only give us what the Americans contemptuously call "canned music " with their plays (and bad music at that) blared from mega- phones, and so blurred and crude that much -of it would never be recognised by the composers. Easter is a fine play, worth seeing, and worthily performed, and the Salzedo Quartet play Haydn's famous music extremely well.
In the first two acts of Appointment with Death, Agatha Christie has no difficulty in making our flesh creep with sinister forebodings ; but, as usual with " thrillers," once the appointment with death is kept, the interest fades out of the play, although it may be sus- tained in the novel. Miry Clare as the horrible Mrs. Boyton looked as wicked as could be, but the other characters were hardly indi- vidualiSed enough to hold our attention. The Gaieties includes Leslie Henson and Hermione Baddeley, and some' of their scenes —such as the parody of the Lunts—are really amusing, but there is little else to entertain in a- show that contains too many dull items and is also hampered with quite indifferent music poorly performed. Inclined as I am to gaiety, I am afraid I cannot recommend The
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