Theatre

Sweet nothing

'Kenneth Hurren

There are probably better Noel Coward comedies than Relative Values available for revival by 1951, when it was written, following such forgotten indiscretions as Peace in Our Time, Pacific 1860 and Ace of Clubs, that legendary talent was already half-way over the hill — but there is no crimination in a rolling bandwagon: and, in any event, it may be that even second-rate Coward is better than none when contemporary wit. on the evidence of the last week or two, has fallen so low in disrepute. I'm bound to say, too, that no play cont iining character like the Countess of Marshwood — a dowager who en cleared herself' to me by her sensible recognition of the inconvenience of having a baby ,in Ascot Week — could he wholly bad, Margaret Lockwood, who plays the countess in the revival at the Westminster, has not, perhaps, the engagingly aristocratic hauteur that Gladys Cooper once brought to the role, but then, anyone who had the secret of that would be putting it up in bottles and selling it at Fortnums to real-life countesses, who have also, largely, lost the knack of it. Miss Lockwood is elegant and charming and she will do; she does not, however, quite lOok„tlie sort of woman who would hiiVe, and Somehow make a virtue of having, social misgivings about the prospect of her son's marrying a famous film actress, or whose way of life would command such devoted admiration in the servants' hall that her butler would raise a joyful toast to "the disintegration of the most unlikely dream that ever troubled the foolish heart of mail — social equality."

This last seems to be the nutshelled message of the piece, and was hard enough to get away with even in 1951 and even with Dame Gladys's assistance. I think almost anyone is likely to get a strangely unsettling feeling that Relative Values should be set and dressed in a somewhat earlier period, and that a reference in the text to„ mah-jong rat her than canasta might have been more appropriate. That, however, would have deprived us of the delight of Joyce Blair's film star, a wild parody of languorous Hollywood glamour, who clearly wouldn't be nearly so entertainingly malicious as a Gaiety Girl. Her romance with the countess's son comes to nothing, of course, as the countess always knew it would, especially when itis revealed that the actress from Hollywood is the sister of her own lady's maid. Coward forestalled criticism of this twist by having it remarked on the stage that it is " a

coincidence in the best tradition of English high comedy," and capped it at the end with the countess's exit line. "Try to behave as if nothing had happened," she says

pointedly, and Miss Lockwood is highly disarming with it, " after all, when you come to analyse it, nothing has."

This, coincidently enough, would have been equally true of an American item, called

Touches which turned up 'at the Apollo last week, and the play

wright, Jean Kerr, might have

tried it. I don't think it would have disarmed anyone, but I feel it

could have been a touch more in gratiating than the whimsy with which she did end her tiresome little play. The household in which

she vainly invites our interest, that of a university professor, has a

family term of affection —'1 love

you six " — which, it is explained, derives from a time when one of

his sons was very small and " six " was the highest number to which he could count or which he could imagine. " I love you six," the little fellow would say to his fond parents. It came up at an early stage, before my patience had frayed, and I let it pass. Miss Kerr returns to it doggedly at the end, though. The professor, sexually restive, as well he might be in this

fatiguing atmosphere, has just put ;idulterotis temptation behind him and returned winninalv to the mother of his ghastly children, taking refuge in second childhood, though he is only forty-three. " I love you six," he says, "I love you seven." "Eight," she says. The curtain is on its way down. "Nine," he says ..

Wendy Craig and David Knight play these roles and I congratulate both of them on their fortitude and on not throwing up.