VIurder Mistaken. By Janet Green. (Ambassadors.)—Wild Horses. By Ben Travers.
(AlchVych.)
VIONICA BARE is an ageing invalid with a nice bit of money tucked may and a hubby called Teddy who is young and attentive. Teddy, earning that Monica is on the point of making a new will, jumps to he wrong conclusion, and speeds his wife's exit from this life by liddling her with drink and arranging her neatly before a gas-fire Aimed on but unlit. So he diddles himself cleverly out of the capital, vhich goes to his wife's sister in the far-off Bahamas. The coroner Las scarcely finished his inquest when Teddy is turning his attention .co a bouncy blonde ex-barmaid, also with a nice little nest-egg, but the is too sharp for him. So is Charlotte Young, who turns up "rom nowhere flashing a cheque-book as bait to catch the Bare, for .his is.the mysterious stranger come to see justice done. It is, after a 'ashion, and Teddy Bare's picnic comes to a suitably gruesome ;nd.
But this is not the sort of thriller which depends primarily upon dot for effect, and the dialogue is not the ordinary reach-me-down hoddy that usually suffices. There is evidence of imagination at vork ; and for the figments of her imagination Miss Green has =ling ; and feeling creates characters where mere invention makes ?tippets. Nothing is more unexpected than the obvious, freshly observed and honestly presented, and the scenes between Teddy Mr. Derek Farr) and the quick-witted blonde Freda (Miss Brenda de 3anzie, whose performance is marvellously shrewd) give many nstances of this. A thick atmosphere of vulgarity and seediness is
nerated, as ,of that uneasy borderland between crime and respecta- )ility over which Mr. Graham Greene and Mr. V. S. Pritchett have 3ri occasion suspended their flares. The scene does not shift from he sitting-room of the house on top of Sunrise Hill, but one is well tware of the road-house-type pub outside the village and the smart- tlecs therein ostentatiously replacing their aspirates between quickies, ind never, never neglecting to think of the next fast one, even at their nost conversationally sparkling. It is Teddy and Freda who are tespectively the true inhabitant and observer of this world, and, since Miss Green has herself realised these characters with special care, Mr. Fan- and Miss de Banzie have more considerable opportu- nities than, say, Miss Patricia Burke, whose part as the avenger is not without its awkwardnesses.
A brand-new Aldwych farce with Messrs. Ralph Lynn and Robert- son Hare. As a devotee of farce I had high hopes, and was perfectly willing for the first fifteen minutes at least to force a few laughs as raucously as the next man. But as the plot tied itself into ever more complicated knots, and as one began to reflect on the exact meaning of the descriptive phrase on the programme, "farcical comedy, enthusiasm evaporated. If you can have a farcical comedy, why not a comical farce ? This hybrid stretched itself languorously, and by the time Mr. Robertson Hare had put on female dress and retired behind the curtains in the company of Mr. Lynn, and the complex of mis- understanding was at its densest, I had become too detached to rally with the traditional response as wholeheartedly as I should have wished. True farce like true tragedy makes the austere demand of unconditional surrender. Your hybrid may ask for little more than patience, and sometimes it is difficult to grant even that. I had hoped to be able to write little more than those incoherent snippets that managements like to stick up outside the theatre—" I screeched till . my lungs burst "—and am sorry to be so cool and collected that I find it possible only to commend the play for its quaint period flavour and to say that it is nice to see Mr. Lynn being goofy again and Mr. Hare showing a nyloned leg and a straight face with all the
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