STAGE AND SCREEN
THE THEATRE
Gertie Maude." By John Van Druten. At the St. Martin's
THIS deft, agreeable, unimportant story of a chorus girl who met with signal bad luck in the year of King George V's Coronation is a period piece in the fullest sense of that expression. Over the nursery fireplace hangs a map of pre-War Europe ; clothes, pictures, slang, allusions are all delightfully true to 1911. So is the play. There is nothing wrong with it ; it is excellent entertainment. A quarter of a century ago we should have thought it pretty terrific. But today —? We admire the dramatic texture, we spend a pleasant evening in the theatre, and we go home wishing that Mr. van Druten could find Pegasus some more contemporary employment than is pro- vided between the shafts of a hansom.
Genie Maude is kept by the Hon. Rags Cartwright, desired by the plebeian Will Heatley (who once seduced her), dis- approved of by Will's sister Annie, and adored by the child Sheila. Rags abandons wild oats in Bohemia for orange- blossom in Belgravia, and Genie, broken-hearted, takes an overdose of sleeping-powder in stout. The play has the appeal of a good magazine story, and disappoints only because it suggests that one ofour best young playwrights is suffering from arrested development. The actors have nothing to complain of, for Mr. van Druten's dialogue is as smooth and apt as ever and all the parts are good. In the best of them Miss Carol Goodner plays Genie with integrity and con- siderable depth of feeling ; but there is a lack of detail in the portrait, and an American accent, intruding rather too often, underlines this defect by blurring the bold, firm outlines which Miss Goodner establishes. The best performance is that Of Mr. Griffith Jones as Will Heatley, a difficult part, to which the actor brings authority and perception. Miss Annabel Maule is quietly and engagingly precocious as the stage-struck child ; Mr. Sebastian Smith, as Genie's father, suggests a happy blend of Barrie with Belcher; and Miss Joan Swinstead's Annie skilfully plumbs the depths of Puritanical repression. Last, but nothing like least, Miss Florence Wood epitomises the waddling, monumental affability
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