THE THEATRE
" Flare Path." At the Apollo Theatre.
To go to this play knowing nothing about it is to sit half through the first act not very hopefully expecting, but distinctly wishing that it may turn out to be a good spy drama, but by the end of the first act it is clear that we are in for an everiltig of sentimental drama spiced with popular humour. I am not one of the apparently large public which likes this sort of thing. I enjoy low comedy and high comedy, but not the Mrs. Minniver brand, which is too remote from reality of any sort without having any compensating brilliance of artifice. Mr. Rattigan, who once wrote a not unamusing play, French Without Tears, has on this occasion tried to mix a little real passion into his sentiment, but with the unhappy result of producing a role so unconvincing and unattractive that Martin Walker tried .in vain not to hand on his discomfort with it to the audience.
The passionate climax, the crucial scene when the young air- man returns from his Rhineland night raid to his wife at 5.3o in the morning, completely missed fire, since the characters of hyper- sensitive hero and erring wife had never been roundly drawn by the dramatist, but were blanks left to Phyllis Calvert and Jack Wading to fill in with their own visible flesh. The dialogue was so fiat and pointless at times that the actors themselves must have felt the irrelevance of what they had said, although luckily such moments usually passed unnoticed by an audience beguiled by Kathleen Harrison's brilliant make-up and deportment as Mrs. Miller and the superb confidence and gusto of Adrienne Allen as the Cockney Polish Countess. At the end of the second act I was left feeling that it ought not to be possible for the glorious subject of the Royal Air Force to be treated so superficially and sentimentally. It is a subject full of heroism, tragedy and comedy, and although one cannot forbid anyone but a great dramatist to touch it, one is entitled to say that a straightforward realistic approach to the theme is demanded, whether as comedy or drama. The last act, however, does make some amends. It gives an opportunity to Adrienne Allen and even to Mr. Martin Walker for a sincere and affecting little scene, and when this is followed by a direct piece of joyful celebration at the safe return from a crash at sea of the Polish airman, on which the curtain falls, we leave the theatre considerably mollified. It is a play to be recommended to all who weep easily but not deeply. They will probably enjoy every moment of it.
JAMES REDFERN.
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