The Constant Couple. By George Farquhar. (Winter Garden.) FARQUHAR'S friendly
farce, which Mr. Alec Chines and the Arts Theatre have chosen to succeed Mr. Fry's The Firstborn in their season at the Winter Garden, turns out to be an elaborate setting, pinchbeck at its periphery but gold at the heart, for one of the ablest comic performances in London. I faulted Mr. Clunes when, during the curtain-calls after Mr. Fry's play, he strode down to the foot- lights, hoary under the singing robes and immemorial beard of law- giving Moses, and blew kisses at the audience ; but I can forgive him now, and understand. He must have been studying Sir Harry Wildair at the time, and remembering the triumph Peg Woffington had in the part. Farquhar wrote The Constant Couple at twenty-one, and its hero is an appropriately idealised debauchee, compounded equally of clesinvolture and sheer unprincipled energy. Vying with the dull- witted Standard, the oily Vizard, the upstart Clincher, and the decrepit Smuggler for the love of Lady Lurewell, Harry Wildair yet has time to pay court to Angelica, whose home he is induced to mistake for a brothel. Through all this Mr. Clunes' romping graciousness carries him with no whiff of unpleasantness. He has broadened and softened his playing of the part since the Arts pro- duction of 1943: the duologues with Lady Lurewell, his comrade of old in the game of darkness, are done with a mature twinkle which suggests unspeakable delights, reminding one sometimes of the Elyot-Amanda exchanges in Private Lives. Much that had hitherto fretted me about Mr. Clunes' style began at last to bewitch me : for a supreme complacency, a pointblank refusal to be discomfited, and an affection for the tippler's leer are all part and parcel of Harry Wildair. Theatrical " Lifemanship " can seldom have been more persuasively expounded. Though it sometimes lacks grace in motion and self-forgetfulness in delivery, Mr. Clunes' performance is gloriously rounded and full of vocal inventiveness. 1 particularly enjoyed the scornful " woof " he interpolates when Angelica, in self-protection, invokes his mother's chastity.
He is partnered by Miss Maxine Audley, whose Lady Lurewell, bearer of an " amorous grudge " against mankind, is her best performance to date. Miss Audley's artificial nods and becks are exactly right for this obsessed flirt ; and her habit of acting as if (to borrow Mr. George Jean Nathan's phrase) " playing Trilby to her own Svengali " perfectly conveys the depth of Lady Lurewell's insincerities. Mr. Laurence Hardy, Mr. Richard Wordsworth, and Mr. Ivan Staff make much of smaller parts, Mr. Staff almost too much ; and Miss Ruth Trouncer, though she tends to look grumpy where she should look distressed, is a sage enough Angelica.
Mr. Clunes' production, embellished by some smartly unfanciful
settings by Miss Fanny Taylor, is spry and generally respectful. I say " generally," because I question his authority for inserting, into his own part and that of Lady Lurewell's maid, the entire " Love's Catechism " scene from The Beaux' Stratagem.
KENNETH T'YNAN.
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