"After October." By Rodney Ackland. At the Arts Ma. RODNEY
ACKLAND is probably, next to Mr. Denis John- ston, the most promising dramatist working in the English theatre today. He has some of Mr. Johnston's qualities : wit and intelligence, great vitality, the power of treating charac- ter freshly and economically, an eye for the unexpected detail that gives life to dialogue or scene, and, above all, the ability to give form to a play by tracing a theme, or a series of themes, through its characters without having to rely on the crutches of a conventional plot. The theme of this play, suggested in the title, is that people are always being forced to " look forward " to some specific date or event in order to avoid brooding upon the realities of the present or considering the equally disturbing probabilities of the more distant future. Mr. Ackland traces it through the members of an impoverished and eccentric Hampstead household who look forward first to the success in June of a play written by one of their number and then, when that hope collapses, to an equally problematical salvation in October. It is so far beyond belief that this play will not be transferred to a public theatte that it is safe to defer to another occasion the detailed comment that one would like to make on-the way in which Mr. Ackland makes a convincing and magnificently entertaining dramatic pattern out of the threads of his characters' relationships and reactions to their common problem. One very much hopes that, beyond relieving that good actor Mr. Godfrey Kenton of a clearly uncongenial part, those who guide its destinies will not think it necessary to make any alterations in the present cast, in which Miss Mary Clare, Mr. Peter Godfrey, Miss Iris Baker, Miss Leonora Corbett and six others all give excellent perfor- mances in parts that are exactly suited to their talents.
DEREK VERSCHOYLE.
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