THE MIDNIGHT FAMILY. By Charles Dorat.
(Arts.) — THE TENDER TRAP. By Max Shulman and Robert Paul Smith. (Saville.) THERE is a type of French play, popular some years ago, which depends for its effect on the incursions of the spirit world into ordinary human life, but without any of the normal spooky paraphernalia that we associate with revenants. This time it is under the all-too- horribly realistic disguise of a French lower- middle-class family that the folk from 'over there' decide to pay a call on a young man. They are, in fact, calling to tell him that he is about to die, and are much put out when he resolutely declines to do anything of the sort, even falling in love with the daughter being an insufficient bait to induce him to accom- pany them back home. All this makes a rather weak and sentimental fantasy like Girau- doux and water—whose would-be poetic dialogue is clumsily rendered into English. The performances of Emrys Jones as the young man and of Elaine Usher as Melanie. the spirit-daughter, do as much as can be done to make it interesting, but as we invariably guess what is going to happen approximately one act before it takes place, the difficulties they and the producer, John Fernald, have to cope with are overwhelming. I doubt if death deserves the treatment it gets from M. Dorat•
At the Saville there is an American comedy on the well-known (and well-worn) theme of the bachelor trapped into marriage by the clever girl. Brian Reece as the bachelor is nice and bewildered, and one feels that if the beat- ing he takes on the stage is any sample of what married life is to be like, he is in for a difficult time. Geraldine McEwan in the role of big-game hunter is charming, though one wonders at moments why nobody, in sheer exasperation, tells her.to shut her tender trap. In general, the play is amusing, but I imagine it was faster and funnier across the Atlantic.
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