THEATRE
Where There's a Will. By R. F. Delderfield. (Garrick.)
THERE is a well-worn recipe for, generating English humour which might be called `the desert-island solution.' Take some people, put them down in some sufficiently unsuitable environment and stir. The resulting mess will probably run for years in the West End. R. F. Delderfield's latest play conforms to this formula. A Devonshire farmer dies and his Cockney relatives descend in hopes of inheriting the farm. From their point of view (or the point of view of all but one of them) an atoll could hardly be nearer a desert island than the English countryside— no television, no fish and chips, no nothing. The one exception to the rule is Alfie Brewer, who has always wanted to work on a farm, but never been able to (why not?)_ Natur- ally he wants to keep the farm on and run it himself—much to the dismay of the other legatees who simply want some ready cash, and are not unnaturally fed up with all this stuff about the land. The resulting intrigues, as Alfie Brewer matches his wits against
those of his brother-in-law, Fred Slater (a dealer, if ever there .was one), make up the main part of the play after the last drop of amusement has been extracted from rural discomfort during the first act.
Unfortunately, the fun is not quite fast and furious enough. Leslie Dwyer and Bill Owen do their best as Alfie and Fred, Doris Yorke and Betty Warren, playing Alfie's sisters, work themselves up into a frenzy of Cockney vituperation over the lack of amenities in Devonshire, but this fails to conceal the want of a really good situation out of which comedy can arise. Moreover, the passages in which Alfie rhapsodises about the good earth are positively embar- rassing and would be far better cut. Mr. Delderfield is an old hand at writing plays, but Where There's a Will seems unlikely to repeat the success of Worm's Eye View. Pitched at the same level, it has few of the qualities which make this kind of play go with a swing.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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