STAGE, SCREEN AND MUSIC
THE THEATRE
New Faces." At the Apollo.
How many years it seems since the nightingale first sang in Berkeley Square. The square was intact in those days, no bomb had fallen in London, the Wren churches stood, and you could do your shopping at Lewis's. It was the days of what was called the phoney war : General Ironside had taken his son to France and had inspired one of these sketches, which is oddly retained and seems to need a historian's footnote already. But New Faces remains what it was last April—far 'the most accom- plished revue in town. The best sketches are retained, though one misses Mr. Bill Fraser's study of a dubious chemist from Charing Cross. Here is Miss Betty Ann Davies still singing sweetly, " If I were Ginger Rogers and you were Fred Astaire," and harshly the magnificent song of hate, "Thank you for the party, Mr. Pollinger." Watching her perfect timing as Mood Grandioso in a parody of those mauve artistic scenes which all revues but this find it necessary to include, the banal appalling innocence of her ' pick-up ' holding unconsciously at bay the lecherous day-dreamer, and the depravity of her knowing child- reciter, one's admiration is unbounded: small and blonde and brittle, she seems capable of dealing with any material. Here, too, are Mr. Charles Hawtrey and Mr. Bill Fraser in the awful throes of song-writing for Tin Pot Ally. These three in themselves are enough to hold together any revue, and perhaps time, and Miss Dorothy Dickson, have not been kind to the memorable fourth, Miss Judy Campbell. Her material, sweet and husky and Mayfair, has dated in the long year we have lived through.
GRAHAM GREENE.
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