The Theatre
" THE MIDSHIPMAID." BY IAN HAY AND STEPHEN KING- HALL. AT THE SHAFTESBURY THEATRE.
IT is generally at this • time of year that Mr. Ian Hay and Mr. Basil Foster put out to sea together and engage upon some " naval manoeuvre." That is the engaging description given to this play on the programme. August, the wet- holiday season, is the time for laughter and not for criticism. And the place for merriment is nearly always a ship.
I know that the British Navy rules the waves—at any rate the surface of them ; that it costs a good deal to the taxpayer ; that sailors, when you can get them to talk about it, usually seem to be in a mood of melancholy ; that theirs is a hard life—low pay, slow promotion, small hope. But all that is life. Immediately you enter a theatre—in
August—the Navy becomes an immense lark. Gallant officers philander with interloping ladies. An air of hospitality prevails. Stern seamen unbend and hornpipes sound. The lower deck makes dry, " grousing " jokes. It's a jolly life. Oh to be a sailor !—on the stage.
It would be pedantic to criticize—even closely to analyse— the new nautical farce. Does the audience laugh ? It does. It laughs so loud and so long that the requisite speed, which is a part of true farcical technique, gets jammed and stuck. Laughter reduces the pace. For instance, there's our aged friend from far-off pantomimes, a composite horse, stuffed with the human frames of Marine Somebody-or-Other and Major Somebody-Else. The horse enters to roars of laughter. It waggles its head or hindquarters. Roars and roars of laughter. I always loved that horse--always enjoyed seeing its tummy emitting cigarette smoke. It is irresistible. We laugh on . . .
Symmetrically, stiffly, too, with all the wooden, unpliant rigidity of farcical repetition, do two young officers click spy- glasses and look aft—or wherever it is ; as two able seamen above them ply paint-brushes in decoration of the quarter- deck ; as two young ladies, twins (and called just " the twins," whenever they appear), suddenly and inseparably pop in and out.
These twins are perhaps a weakness—too much even for August ; and Miss Mary Clare is undeniably sacrificed in the part of a chaperone who is always losing them. Also Mr. Clive Currie, who has a touch of fierce realism in his aspect and manner, and one of whose strong dramatic points is his snarling grin—he also is compelled to make himself a little too absurd in the part of a sycophantic M.P. who is vaguely inspecting the ship on an economy stunt, and per- tinaciously trying to get his pretty daughter married to a rich young man, until Mr. Basil Foster annexes her. This M.P., by the way, takes off his hat first to the Quarter-Deck, then to the name of the Peer whose son his daughter ought to have married. What a man ! What a joke !
But I have reserved the best bit and the real success of the evening for the end.
This is Mr. A. W. Baskcomb's performance as Able Seaman Pock, who is required to take part in the ship's theatricals and does it by reciting Longfellow with half-closed eyes, so that none of his comrades in the audience may put him off. A real creation, this—a fine performance. And Mr. Roger Maxwell plays a bandmaster with such truth and sobriety that he risks throwing the play a little out of balance ; but somehow dodges the peril, and makes us feel merely that, on board ship, a few people are getting on with their work, while the others give themselves up to fun and flirtation with the
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