" They Came by Night." By Barre Lyndon. At the
Globe
THIS dexterous, entertaining, unimportant drama shares to a striking degree the virtues and the limitations of its author's earlier success, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse. Once more the central figure, though tantalisingly invested with the rudiments of humanity, is remembered, when all is over, only as a puppet. Once more crimes are committed in an atmosphere and an idiom impressively authentic. Once more a perfunctory love interest is introduced " to make it stronger," as Mr. Wallace Evennet's teetotaller says when he adds soda to his first glass of whisky. And once more the formula is an un- qualified success. It would, indeed, be above criticism did not Mr. Lyndon show such a mastery of his medium that he clearly needs encouragement to fly higher.
John Fothergill is a jeweller, vague, benign, respectable : just the man to have stolen goods plahted on him by a gang of international crooks, just the man to turn out, in the end, more than a match for his exploiters. Pitch-forked into the underworld, Fothergill, whose bewilderment is most engagingly presented by Mr. Owen Nares, touches the same chords of sympathy and of laughter as Irwin did in Three Men on a Horse, and that admirable comedy may well have provided Mr. Lyndon with inspiration. The bey-, scene in the Globe production is a heavily mechanised assault on a bullion vault, frustrated at the last moment by Mr. Nares' rehabilitation of a dislocated burglar-alarm. And the best acting (though Miss Ursula Jeans plays a thankless part most loyally and well) comes from Mr. David Burns as Bugsie, an American safe- breaker with a soft heart and a flamboyant taste in waistcoat buttons. Tough, transparent, pungent of speech, Bugsie towers over the other characters by at least a dimension, and Mr. Burns' beautifully timed performance will be remembered by those who see this play long after its more conventional
Previous page
