THE THEATRE
Jam Today." At the St. Martin's Theatre.
!SEX a famous novelist writes an exceptionally daring book and eS for the name of his heroine that of the wife of the Treasurer the Council for the Preservation of Ancient England, there bound to be -something of -a pother. The book has to be Ithdrawn and a libel action is threatened. But when the said
., yt-unger than her husband and somewhat discontented with er married existence, suddenly has an affair with the novelist IS then accused by her husband of Conducting another affair 1th Ills secretary ; and when - her young niece—thirsting for perleace—spends a night at the Said novelist's flat ; and when respectable husband confesses in his turn to a ntunber of S of unfaithfulness—:well then you have something more than Pother; you have a_ plot for a three-act comedy which will be ther excruciatingly unpleasant or highly enjoyable according to skill with which it is written.
Fortunately Denis Waldo& and Roger Burford have the
equired skill. Except for a lapse into dullness in the first scene Act II, they keep the pot nicely boiling, and with the aid of '51:1 Comedy dialogue and a few shafts of wicked wit, persuade that there is every justification for a brief escape into the half-forgotten dayi of peace. "Instantly our melancholy is gone, and the pangs of conscience are no- longer relevant to it."
One of the chief charms of the play is that the dialogue is not divorced from action and movement. There is a splendid scene, in the true vein of comedy, when the husband, preparing to part from his wife, conducts their farewell conversation while appor- tioning the various pieces of furniture (a red label stuck on for her and a white label for himself) ; and another' in which the erring niece, having gained nothing more from her visit to the novelist's flat than a cup of cocoa and a talking-to, expresses her dissatisfaction with life in round terms, slightly blurred by large mouthfuls of toast, during a belated breakfast. Such scenes—and indeed the whole play, for that matter— depend on imaginative and skilful production ; and this is pro- vided by Edward Stirling, who is very rightly not afraid of speed and has rigorously avoided that most maddening of mannerisms—the pause for laughter. He is never afraid of letting his cast throw away good lines (and the authors provide plenty of them) rather than freeze the stage action until comparative silence returns.
Yam Today is also made notable because it provides one of our greatest tragic actresses with her first comedy part. It iá to Beatrix Lehmann what Ninotchka was to Garbo ; and, like Garbo, Miss Lehmann brings off the raSh experiment with complete success. In Close Quarters she revealed, in a number of very touching scenes, that she could play the affectionate and domestic wife equally as well as the tormented and hunted woman ; here, in a part which any lesser actress would use to dominate the whole stage, she uses her enormous talent with a cunning economy of gesture which is all the more effective because it acts as an exact foil to Olga Lindo's apocalyptic rendering of a fussy and slightly ridiculous modern mother. The scenes between these two provide some of the most enjoyable moments in the play—Miss Lehmann using the etcher's acid (suitably diluted) and Miss Lindo laying about her with a gloriously exuberant palette knife.
As the ridiculous husband Frank Pettingell gives a very fine performance, and one is thankful that his three weeks' trip to Yorkshire to buy an ancient kill bridge takes place almost entirely in the interval. Betty Jardine, as the young girl enjoying a bit of weltschmerz, provides the surprise of the evening by, on at least two occasions, acting everybody else clean off the stage. John Stuart, as the novelist, carries off the least grateful part of the play with great tact and a Savile Row wardrobe which would make the editor of The Tailor and Cutter gasp with pleasure.
BASIL WRIGHT.
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