THE THEATRE
" Landslide." At the Westminster.
IT might be very useful if there were in existence a responsible and reputable body of critics who could compile a simple system of classification by which each play could be graded as pre-war butter and margarine were graded, so that playgoers might know exactly what they were getting or not getting. The trouble is that once we go outside a few general categories it is impossible to fix a single label on a play. Landslide, for example, the new theatrical concoction at the Westminster by Dorothy Albertyn and David Peel, stated to be based on the play, unknown to me, Altitude 3200, by Julien Luchaire—how could we label this unpromising mixture of Alpine adventure, sentimental gush, naïve and sophisticated love-making, ill-mixed but nevertheless all dished up together by the producer, Mr. John Gielgud, and presented as a breath-taking melodrama!
Like many other war-time dishes its main ingredient is what we might call sausage-meat—dramatic sausage-meat. Nothing in it is real, but it all pretends to be. As a man who has done a little climbing in the Alps, I found the opening scene not only uncon- vincing but boring. The party of climbers who are marooned by a landslide (a situation with dramatic possibilities) spent much of the first act taking off and putting on bits of clothing. A party of girls suffer the same fate, and the rest of the play consists of their respective pairings-off. Dramatic tension is obtained, or rather strained after, by abrupt pauses, melodramatic gestures—in which the hand of the producer is far too evident—but there is nothing of any real dramatic interest, and we are forced, in its absence, to entertain ourselves with the variously charming appear- ances of the four girls, Marian, Vivien, Sheila and Judy. I found the minx Vivien (Dulcie Gray) the most lifelike and amusing. One silly little horror falls into a crevasse or gets otherwise fatally dis- posed of, and the rest are in due time rescued—much to the audience's relief. One cannot help wondering why Mr. Gielgud directed such a play. Nor has he produced it well. Artificial comedy is his line. Landslide is undoubtedly artificial, but unfor-
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