“ Figure of Fun." By Andre Roussin. Adapted by Arthur
Macrae.
(Aldwych.)
IN the first act of this ingenious comedy we see an artist, suddenly deserted by his beautiful wife, reacting to the catastrophe with spineless fatalism. In the second act we learn that the first act was a play within a play. Mr. John Mills (who plays the actor who played the artist) complains, at supper after the show, that he is not at home in the latter part ; the artist's feebly acquiescent attitude is untrue to life and particularly untrue to his (the actor's) imperious and forceful nature. But we, and the members of the cast who are having supper with him, know that what was supposed to happen to the artist has in fact happened to his impersonator ; the actor's beautiful wife has bolted. And when at last this news is broken to him the actor behaves in exactly the same flat, undramatic way as he is paid to behave on the stage. The third act shows us the second act of the play within a play. It is the following afternoon, the actor is drunk and the comedy gathers pace as we watch his colleagues trying to steer him through his part. They fail, and the curtain has to be run down • but it is a transparent curtain and through it we see a happy though not a very convincing denouement. There are various reasons why this pleasant entertainment fails to come off satisfactorily. One is that Mr. Mills, though he does admirably in the more serious passages, is not really a comedian. Another is that the production in the third act is much too heavy handed. The drunken actor is altogether too drunk ; this robs his aberrations of the interest and suspense which they should engender. We never have, as we ought to have, the feeling that he is skating on thin ice, that he may get away with it after all. But an enjoyable evening, nevertheless, is to be had at the Aldwych, where, in addition to Mr. Mills's engaging personality, there is uniformly polished acting from a cast including Miss Brenda Bruce, Miss Lana Morris, Miss Joyce Heron, Miss Viola Lyel and Miss Natasha Parry. Mr. Arthur Macrae does particularly well in a Woosterish part, and his adaptation, though it does not fulfil hopes aroused by reports of the original, is a competent and often
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