CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THEATRE
3ead Secret. By Michael Clayton Hutton. (St. James's.)
'ire dialogue is redolent of clichés and the production of a glossy tonality; yet the play has merits which author and producer seem tent on concealing behind a thick veneer of (if there is such a word) neretricity. We are not, at the outset, particularly interested in Hr. and Mrs. Curzon and their guest, Diana. ,Sackville. The East Coast residence of the former we recognise as one of those olde- vorlde, uppe-and-downe houses which have no existence outside the beatre and precious little verisimilitude in it ; and the three characters cress, behave and speak in purely theatrical conventions. But we av prepared to be interested in the old tramp who blows in, breezy, libulous and parasitic, on New Year's Eve, and we are keenly carious to know why he is familiar in such detail with the clock vhich now stands upon the Curzons' mantelpiece.
The tramp stays the night, which is natural enough ; but when he irolongs his visit indefinitely we suspect that he has the key to a awboard with a skeleton in it. He has. Mr. Curzon murdered Ars. Curzon's first husband ; the tramp (then serving in the police brce, from which he was later dismissed for embezzlement) was agaged on the case. It looks as though he is the Curzons' guest or life—a prospect for which, incidentally, it is difficult to share his dist), for the household leads an unimaginably boring existence, -2anasta, presumably three-handed, being the only form of ecreation ever mooted.
It would be unfair to disclose how the Curzons' dilemma is esolved ; it will suffice to say that poison and the police both have t hand in the matter. Mr. Hugh Wakefield, though encouraged or )ermitted to lapse at times into buffoonery, gives an enjoyable Lc:count of the old tramp. Mr. Ian Hunter does his best for the nurderer, whose rudimentary character is a drab blend of fustian md subfusc. Miss Sophie Stewart, as his wife, battles gallantly vith an unrewarding part, and Miss Joyce Heron tells us all there is o tell about Diana Sackville except why the unfortunate girl had Loafing better to do than to spend a fortnight, in January, on the liffs of the East Coast, with the Curzons. PETER FLEMING.
Previous page
