The Vortex. By Noel Coward. (Lyric, Hammersmith).
THE 'twenties, per se, are not so very amusing ; Mr. Coward, Mr. Scott Fitzgerald and Mr. Evelyn Waugh, per se, are. Mr. Michael MacOwan, in his present production of Mr. Coward's early jeremiad against narcotics, has made the mistake of supposing that a general- ised 'twentyish atmosphere is enough of itself to keep us happy. He should have seen that The Vortex without Mr. Coward is not only Hamlet without the prince ; it is The Egoist without Sir Willoughby Patterne.
Philologists, however, may enjoy themselves, measuring the extent to which the comic style of the play depends on the associa- tion of verbs of hatred or adoration with articles of clothing, items of interior d:coration and abstract nouns. One hates hats, loathes lampshades, detests divans ; one adores puce and casuistry. The dialogue is stilted ; • to be more precise, it is high-heeled ; aftd I could only describe it as " scintillating " if I imagined that the word implied a teasing cross between sinning and titillating.
The plot presents a situation in which an ageing beauty sees her son's love-affair wrecked by her latest lover, and it reaches its climax in a long last-act duologue during which debauchee son upbraids debauchee mother, ending up with his head in her lap and thus completing a` `maternal love-hate pattern" which is just enough ahead of its time to be thoroughly out of date. The rest of The Vortex is a moral melodrama, whose springs a too determined hand has over- wound. They protrude from the mechanism : observe, for instance, the pains Mr. Coward takes to get the bedroom window opened in his third act, merely in order to permit mother to fling a capsule of cocaine through it ten minutes later.
Miss Nobel Jeans, as mother, more than holds her own in this tug-of-war with the silver cord, interlarding her exhausting part with so much vivacity that the accusation scene is made to sound mon- strously unfair. Mr. Dirk Bogarde, miscast, plays her son as what the Americans call a " drugstore cowboy," and is challenged in inadequacy by nearly every other man in the company. I except only Mr. Peter Jones, superbly engrossed in a tiny part, which, as written.
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