“The Gay Invalid"
Sta.—May I be allowed to raise an eyebrow at the curious divagations which obscure Mr. Tynan's notice of The Gay Invalid. If a critic dislikes a piece, three targets merit his arrows—writer, producer and cast. I am all for allowing latitude to criticism in these days when the very art is in danger. Let us therefore stretch our charity beyond the pillars of good taste and even stomach Mr. Tynan's gibe at that wonderful veteran, Mr. Matthews, for being " quite transparently not in the prime of life." Let us go further, and say that Mr. Tynan, if he be honestly convinced, can enlarge the number of his targets, and chide me (or promoting The Gay Invalid at all
However, this is the first time I have seen a manager accused of all the crimes in a production, and accused with the bluster of a hanging counsel. Mr. Matthews is miscast? I am to blame. Her part is not worthy of Miss Bergner? It all comes of "Mr. Daubeny's flair for opening cans with diamonds." Does Mr. Tynan not like the piece's title? "I think I trace the hand of Mr. Daubeny." And summing up at tbe beginning of his review, Mr. Tynan denounces the entire production as "wasteful and wincingly unpleasant, and for this it would be vain to blame anyone but Peter Daubeny, the manager responsible." There is, moreover, a suggestion that the producer's conception has been blurred by overcasting. Again by inference I am to blame.
Anyone who puts a play on to the stage is a fair target for arrows, and I am loath to suggest that standards of "fairness" should be applied to a department of criticism with a tradition so honourable as that to which Mr. Tynan now belongs. Yet where does criticism end, one wonders, and where, reading Mr. Tynan, enters some remote spleen which has nothing to do with the obvious defects of The Gay Invalid.—
Previous page
