THERE has probably never been a revue which was not
best described as "good in parts," and the frequent insipidities of Slings and Arrows are the price we have tp pay for seeing Miss Gingold at her very best. It is a stiffish price but most of us would pay an even higher one if we had to. There is a Hogarthian quality about her attack, a sort of louche zest which seems particularly congruous to our rather slatternly times. Whether as a repressed masseuse or a plutocratic laundress, or guying Miss Herlie as Medea, she is unfailingly and brilliantly successful ; and as one comes, gratefully, to these oases of virtuosity one forgets the too often featureless desert which separates them from each other.
The entertainment, which is full of allusions—mostly cryptic as far as the general public is concerned—to theatrical affairs and personalities, has been criticised for this tendency to parochialism, which it shares with at least one other similar production. Personally I find these jokes boring, because I ^am not—or only very rarely— in a position to understand them ; but I suspect that the majority of theatre-goers (though they understand them' if possible, even less than I do) enjoy them very much indeed. Even if they have never heard of " Binkie " or Mr. Claude Soman, they are prepared to, and do, laugh like mad at references to them • they can see that the references are intended to amuse, and by showing amuse-
ment themselves they somehow identify themselves with the mysterious and intimate world on the other side of the footlights. And so, although this internecine raillery in fact goes over their heads, they get an obscure kick out of pretending that it does not, and, although the critics may cavil, the net entertainmehrvalue of the show is increased.
It sinks, at times, pretty low in Slings and Arrows. Mr. Walter Crisham, though extremely agile, is -not really a comedian, and too many of the sketches and songs are, as near as makes no odds, pointless. Miss Diana Maddox does nicely as an ex-starlet who has failed to graduate in Mr. Rank's Charm School, and Miss Gretchen Franklin displays a pronounced gift for comedy whenever she is given the chance. But if it were not for the alchemy of
Miss Gingold it would be a very dull evening. PETER FLEMING.
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