CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THE THEATRE
"One Wild Oat." By Vernon Sylvaine. (Garrick.) IT is not, I am afraid, to the higher side of our natures that Mr. Robertson Hare appeals. We love him dearly, but we are not really on his side. When he gets into trouble we do not want to see him get out of it ; we want to see him get into worse trouble, and he generally does. Though his situation is frequently pathetic we do not feel in the least sorry for him ; and when he turns at bay we await with pleasurable anticipation and a reasonable degree of confidence his further discomfiture. In our attitude towards him there is not a trace of that well-known national characteristic sympathy for the under-dog. As we watch his torments, loudly applauding his tormentors, our beaming, happy faces do not look as if they belonged to crypto-sadists ; but I am rather afraid that they do.
Mr. Sylvaine's farce has a plot which is serviceable but far too complex to explain. At the time it was perfectly clear to me why the fact that Mr. Rim had seduced a rural postmistress twenty-five years ago necessitated Mr. Alfred Drayton dressing up as his wife, and the connection between this ruse and the determination of Mr. Drayton's son to marry Mr. Hare's daughter against the wishes of her father seemed both obvious and logical. But now, looking back on it, I am not at all sure that I could give an intelligible account of the imbroglio, and since the most perfunctory attempt to do so would monopolise at least a page of j'he Spectator, perhaps we had better take the plot as read.
It is principally Mr. Drayton who keeps it moving. Large, vulgar and unscrupulous, no stranger to the black market, he bullies Mr. Hare in a most cruel manner, and e'en when some turn of events forces them into a temporary alliance his manner remains minatory and Mr. Hare's status that of a victim. Mr. Drayton is really very funny indeed, Mr. Hare is as good as ever, and since Mr. Sylvaine has adorned his preposterous situations with a sufficiency of good lines One Wild Oat looks like producing the theatrical equivalent of a
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