1 JUNE 1929, Page 12

The Theatre

["KEEPERS OF YOUTH." By ARNOLD RIDLEY. AT THE DUKE OF YORK'S TKEATRE. "THE MATRIARCH." By G. B. Sl'ERN. AT THE ROYALTY. "THE INFINITE SHOEBLACK." AT THE GLOBE.]

A rquiEusiow of plays concerned with the conflict between youth and age has recently been scattered over the London theatres.

Inevitably these efforts depend for their effect upon a com- plicated time-scheme, more appropriate to the novel—to it Tolitoy or a Proust; working' in masses—than to a ' twO and a half hours' unfolding of sagas punctuated by intervals. But after much slickness and slapdashery of crooks and comics one is willing to watch the trailing and straggling drama for a change ; while one recognizes how difficult it must alWays be for the dramatist to bring in Time as his auxiliary.

Thus, "three months later, eighteen months later, three years, six years later" premises Mi. John van Diuteii in his latest play, After All, seen only, so far, in two recent per- formances by the Three Hundred Club. I feel inclined, after due reflection, to call it a distinct advance upon anything he has yet done : a delicate essay in reminiscence, illustrating that old them& of the tender tyranny exercised by parents upon their children.

• The children long to "be themselves," and in these days, who can prevent them but themselves ? Yet they will, " after all," be partly their parents, with such changes in manners and outlook as may be dictated by the Time Spirit. In time, Phyl Thomas (Miss Norah Balfour) will be remarkably domestic ; though she was snatched from home by a man who could marry her only when his first wife was obliging enough to die. In time, Ralph Thomas, after a fierce experiment with a high- coloured specimen from the dancing cabarets, will long, he too, for four walls and a hearth, by which a man may doze or smoke in the evening. But this second generation will resolve never to thwart their children, who will, however, no doubt be thwarted by life. If we avoid the blunders of our parents, life will commit them for us. There is a very pretty irony—no visible rubbing in of the thesis—in the end of the finest piece of work Mr. Van Druten has given us : though I do not sup- pose that it would easily have the success of Young Woodley.

The thought of that sentimental hero brings me to Mr. Ridley's Keepers of Youth, which is stimulating aggrieved pro- test from those who "cannot believe" that a private school "for the sons of gentlemen" could contain, on its teaching staff, such a collection of duffers and knaves as are here exhibited for condemnation.

Immediately we all begin reviewing that supposedly careless, really melancholy, period of the past. And I can assert that I have known two at least of Mr. Ridley's school- masters—the loafing and disillusioned and ill-washed Mr. Sullivan, beautifully played by Mr. Herbert Ross, and (very nearly) the tittle-tattling Mr. Slade, a little caricatured by Mr. George Elton. But that was-long ago, and we like to think —do we not ?—that even schoolmasters improve ; though why they should, so long as their salaries remain fixed at a derisory figure, I don't quite see. The profession--in its smaller branches—hardly tempts the best brains ; though it is perhaps unfair to suggest, as Mr. Ridley seems to do, that only those collapse into it who are under clouds or who have failed (like critics) at everything else. Still, certain of his chosen types are, I think, recognizable. It is in the working up of 'motives and of a melodramatic plot—always the difficulty in a school play—that the author becomes crudely violent and has to suppose that a head master could struggle for years under the blackmail. of a blackguard •" sports master, whose manners may be exemplified' by the gesture with Which -he snatches some biscuits off the plate of the young assistant who has just arrived for his first term.

Equally 'ineredible is the mysteriously youthful assistant matron whose amours - with the blackguard bully and the in- flammable new-comer form the thread of the play's action. This young PerkOn is Very Wiciiigly- "produced." She is oppres-• sively " refaned," when she ought to be rustic.- And -her night- wear alone would unfit her far interrupted slumbers in the attic of a school; from which the invisible, but reputedly powerful, matron-in-chief would have eirchided her at a glance; - Like After All; Miss Stern'S: play,The Matriareh; strays' over months' andyehrs in recounting, this time, a Jewish saga.; dominated by the ample form Of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who presides magnificently over the rise and, ruin and (We hope) the Ultimate restoration of the Rakonitz It is one of the- best -performances- she has ever given, and it con- firms the opinion of those who think that her real gift is for a form- of satirical comedy. = What shall I --say, of the hero of The Infinite Shoeblack (see Carlyle), which is this week transferred from the Comedy to the Globe Theatre ?

His name is Andrew Berwick ; he is played.by Mr. Leslie Banks in the stirling Tweed manner ; and yet nothing that Mr. Banks can do convinces us that this lamentable hero is anything better than a fraud. After snatching the fainting form of an unknown unfortunate from the wintry. streets (Edinburgh) he indeed generously nourishes her for a while. (You will have guessed 'that he falls in love at first sight.) But then, alas ! meeting her again in Cairo during the War, he snatches at her once more-to remove her, not from snow and mud, but from pleasure on four thousand a year, legiti- mately inherited from an aunt-. He is suPpOsed to be noble in his renunciation of that four thousand.' And so he may lie --,for himself. But what about her ? She is to be his penniless Scotch heroine and her duty is to fulfill his multitudinous dreams Of -abundant offspring. She tries, poor dear—once; then dies. What a man!' But the poor woman was well Out of it. She is delightfully acted (with small defects in diction) by Miss Mary Newcomb, who I gather from a recent utterance of hers, manages to regard this incredibly idiotie Andrew Berwick - as' Every-woman's ideal husband. - - • • RICHARD -JENNINGS.