THEATRE
The Boy Friend. By Sandy Wilson. (Players' Theatre.) Gnus with cloche hats, low-slung waists and high-pitched voices, darting coy glances and squeaking in refined accents, giving a shock- ing glimpse, now and then, of directoire knickers : boys in blazers and flannels and open-necked shirts ; tap-dancing,' vibrant senti- mentality ; two good tunes. There is the short recipe for the typical English musical-comedy of the 'twenties. Sandy Wilson has used it all in a straight-faced skit which puts the pasticheurs of the Players on tiptoe. The Boy Friend happens at Nice in a finishing school and on the Plage. The messenger-boy is quite properly the son of a lord, and the typist he courts inevitably a millionaire's daughter. But Mr. Wilson does not look coldly on the febrile decade. Without mercy for the vapidity of the typical musical-comedy, he shows all compassion for the artists who performed it. He even achieves the two good tunes—one the title-song, the other called " A Room in Bloom-sberrie." The youngsters of the company (the leading lady is 19 !) ape the poop-a-doop and vo-de-o-do that came so naturally to their parents as accurately as if they had been alive at the time, and Vida Hope has directed so firmly that juniors like Ann Rogers, Anthony Hayes, Maria Charles and Anne Wakefield are as com- fortable in their parts as older hands—Joan Sterndale Bennett, Violetta and Fred Stone. For the middle-aged this is a bitter-sweet show ; for the under-forties it ought to be the funniest thing in town. The Players' should do two things : extend the run beyond three weeks, and buy some pink ruched garters for the girls whose costume is inauthentic only by the absence of those alluring circlets without which any flapper felt naked. GERARD FAY.
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