The Theatre
[" BROADWAY." BY PHILIP DUNNING AND GEORGE ABBOTT. AT THE STRAND THEATRE. "THE FATHER OF A FAMILY." BY GOLDONI. THE PLAYROOM Six.] Perhaps I need not apologize for being a little late with an account of Broadway. This latest of American shockers will be transferred from the Strand to the Adelphi Theatre at the end of this week and there, surely, it will enthrall London for many nights to come. The Adelphi is its appro- priate home.
But what a change has come over American melodramas since the days when William Gillette appeared in Secret Service at this very theatre !
In that far-off age, American playwrights had to go back to the" dear old" civil war for their" secret slaying in the dark" —for revolver shots, stabbings, spies and cool crimes com- mitted by men with motionless countenances. Nowadays there is no need to rake up the past. Modern New York will do.
It is all due to Prohibition--so the programme assures us. "An enormous traffic in illicit liquor" has called up gangs of boot-leggers who control the divisions of the city ; and the manners of condottieri in medieval Italy have returned— gang desperately competing with gang over disputed spoils ; pirate gangs preying, in turn, upon the better organized bandits. Even so did Lucca and Pisa, say, struggle for mastery of plain and walled city, while Dante called upon the pre- destined Prince to separate the combatants.
Only, in mediaeval or Renaissance Italy, it must have all looked so beautiful !—before the motorists destroyed the picturesque by insisting that it should be easily accessible ; before the Lido reached the level of musical comedy appeal. You were stabbed perhaps, as you watched the yellow Tiber and the sun behind the castle of St. Angelo ; but at least you enjoyed the spectacle before you sank to your dark rest. Here there is no beauty for the enchantment of perpetually threatened life—unless we count the fluffy " attractions " of the Paradise Night Club chorus ; the well- marshalled line of Katies, and Lils, and Rubys and Pearls who make a lively pattern against the back scene, as they slide in and out, and plunge on to the adjacent stage for their turns. The remarkable skill of the play is seen in the inter- weaving of these two themes—the bootlegger " motive " unobtrusively blending with the more familiar atmosphere of light comedy, caught in its undressed condition behind the scenes. On the surface the usual thumps of a civilized jazz ; underneath, the rustlings of criminality—sounds of the saxophone faintly punctuated by the click of " silencer " pistols, with, on one desperate occasion, the crack of an
audible shot, hardly more noticeable,- however, than the exaggerated pop of a champagne cork flying in a city where wine (of a sort) flows like water, since the Puritans " sur.. pressed " it. The discord, the contrast is sharply effective. The melodrama gains in reality and intensity by its setting in a frivolous environment ; all being done under the glare of electricity ; no evasions, no lowering of lights, no approxima- tion to the ordinary " crook " model. And all, too, being said or shouted in a highly-seasoned lingo of the latest figurative slang. "I wonder if that banana gave me a phony name," one of the chorus ladies will be shouting at the long- distance telephone, while an immaculate bandit will be " bumping-off " a rival at a few yards distance.
This language tires the ears, as the lights dazzle the eyes and the almost incredible slickness and efficiency of production weary the attention. Broadway isn't a rest cure. It is a fillip for the nerves. It is a feast for all who complain that life, in this " has-been " old London of ours, becomes monotonous. Let us go to New York. Let us even have Prohibition and see what happens in consequence. Or, if the strain of watching is enough, let us keep our liquor and rejoice Pharisaically that we're not yet as our cousins are out yonder The acting is in tone with the rest of the production— terrifyingly competent ; each performance balanced by fault- less association with the others, so that none needs exceptional praise, unless we give that to Mr. Roy Lloyd's beautiful realization of the comedian with a " personality " ; the one touch of veiled kindliness perceptible in the glaring world of bootlegging and cabarets. Do not miss Broadway, if you want excitement. It is a pungent, dramatic cocktail.
London has a new little—a very little—theatre in the Playroom Six, which has established itself for the production of " uncommercial " plays in New Compton Street. Last week they gave a pretty, fantastic comedy by Goldoni. They announce other productions which I hope to be able to report, if the ente-riso sueceeds in attracting the restricted public to which it modestly appeals.
RICIIARD JEISNINGS.
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