THE THEATRE.
MR. MILNE'S "SUCCESS" AT THE HAYMARKET.
THE RT. HON. R. SELBY MANNOCK, M.P., owing in some measure to the fact that he had been wise enough to marry the worldly and influential Lady Jane, is a successful and a promising man, or—as a friend of his put it—success has closed in on him. He is a Cabinet Minister, he is in the running as the next Chancellor of the Exchequer, and is freely men- tioned as a future Prime Minister. That he is also a person of culture (although, I am bound to say, I found in him no symptoms of culture) is amply proved by the fact that the Spectator is reported once to have remarked that he was the only member of the Cabinet who could be trusted never to bungle a literary quotation. Having an official engagement in a provincial town, he stays the night with the Carchesters. Lady Carchester—Sally—was the sweetheart of his childhood and youth ; accordingly, when he goes to bed that night— I had never before seen Cabinet Ministers go to bed, and was interested to note that they do so fully dressed, even to their boots—he harks back in dreams to the days of childhood. His small, eight-year-old self, Sally as a little girl, and a little boy friend come upon the scene, and then Sally as a quite entrancing young woman, and into this dream his grown-up self and all the symbols of his grown-up success intrude, thwarting the innocence and simplicity with the complications and conventions of a more mercenary state of being. He awakes next morning early and goes out into the woods. There, posed in carefully arranged natural surroundings as though she were about to be photographed, he finds the con- temporary Sally Lady Carchester. Fresh from his dream, he declares that he still loves her passionately and she replies to the same effect. His worldly success suddenly appears to him in its essential hollowness and be determines to yield to his true impulse, in short, to bolt with Lady Carchester. But things, of course, must be settled first. He asks her for a week's delay and begins by sending in his resignation to the Prime Minister. Unfortunately this measure, coming at this particular moment, has all the effect of a carefully- planned ruse, and, so far from accepting his resignation, the Prime Minister offers him the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. This realization of his greatest ambition bowls him completely over and he sends two telegrams, one to the Prime Minister accepting, the other to Lady Carehester saying, simply, "I beg your pardon." Success has finally closed in on him.
And success, too, has closed in on Mr. Milne. He can be relied on to produce successful and unimportant plays regu- larly for the next fifteen years. His play has all the ingredients of the conventional comedy par excellence. There is the necessary flavour of high life with a dash of politics—not, of course, omitting Socialism, for the Minister's son, young Mannock, is a budding Socialist : the very modern young lady, so familiar on the stage, is fully represented in Freda Mannock, the daughter, and her highly unsentimental methods of love-making ; and, lastly, Mr. Milne has taken over with complete success Sir James Barrie's dream-and-childhood element—an indispensable ingredient to the successful play of to-day.
And Mr. Milne does it all very well. He has an admirable sense of the stage ; his dialogue scintillates ; his characters are touched in with a variety of amusing and typical detail ; the dream scene is done with a delicacy and a certain pathetic wistfulness worthy of Sir James himself, although, like Sir James, Mr. Milne occasionally crashes through the ice into the cold waters of sentimentality, as when the Cabinet Minister flings up his arms and carols, "Sally the child, Sally the girl, and Sally the woman, and aw. . . . . ways my beloved!"
an outburst so alarmingly false that I was with difficulty withheld from diving for my hat and fleeing the Haymarket. What, then, of the play as a whole ? It provides a delightful entertainment after a good dinner, and fortunately I had had a good dinner. Throughout the play one is never bored, and that, nowadays, is saying a good deal. But, judged by high standards and on an empty stomach, it is quite superficial.
The characters, too—amusingly drawn and skilfully indi- vidualized—are superficial, and for this reason the denouement, which should have been a tragedy, is without serious import. I was sorry that Mr. Mannock was strangled by success, but no more sorry than I had been during one of the intervals to find myself too late for an intoxicating drink. I left feeling that I had been pleasantly entertained and that my gentler emotions had been agreeably tickled, the more so that the acting was excellent. Mr. Cherry, except when in the sentimental moments he pulled out the Vox Humana and when lie over-ranted his final capitulation to "success," made an excellent Cabinet Minister ; Miss Moyna Macgill was an entrancing Sally—indeed, I suspect that she brought to the part, more than Mr. Milne did ; and Miss Grace Lane gave a subtle and amusing interpretation of the aristocratic Lady Jane. Her good-night kiss to her husband was a triumph of refined frigidity and provided an excellent "curtain." Mr. Milne has a genius for "curtains." There is amusingly sly criticism in that which closes the first act. Descending on the Minister rehearsing his speech alone in his study, it cuts him off in full flood and his voice is still heard pouring out eloquence behind it.
MARTIN ARMSTRONG.
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