The Theatre
" Little Catherine." A Comedy from the French of Alfred Savoir, by Virginia and Frank Vernon. Produced by Frank Vernon. At the Phoenix Theatre.
BY comparison with the cinema, theatrical fare is all too frequently meat for the ascetic. The diet we are allowed compels us to alternate between intellectual caprice and inconsequent frivolity. Only on feast days are we permitted the indulgence of the senses.
Consequently, the ambrosial dish that M. Savoir and Mr. Vernon have prepared for us may at first taste appear rather indigestible. The recipe is not a new one, kit it is of a kind which, in this most healthful of ages, is omitted from most theatrical cookery books. A blaze of colour which would have startled the most luxurious of Oriental potentates, gorgeous dresses by Gontcharowa and Mr. O'Neill's extremely effective music leave us in such a state of dazzled amazement that we have difficulty in attending to the action of the play. The plot, such as there is of it, is straightforward and not unduly exacting. For this evening at any rate we may wrap up our intelligence in tissue paper.
Sophie of Anhalt is brought to the Russian Court where she is to change her name to Catherine and marry the Grand Duke Peter. The latter, with a regrettable lack of taste which shows him in spite of his blustering protestations to be no connoisseur of women, regards the alliance as an imposition and refuses to acknowledge his wife. When eventually he is compelled to do so by his aunt, the Empress Elizabeth, he surrenders with the worst of graces and returns sulkily to his brass-button idealisms. Dreams, however, soon give way to plots ; Peter remains boorish towards his wife and redoubles his efforts to secure the allegiance of the soldiery. Whereupon Catherine, who is fully aware of the implications of the situation, consoles herself with a burly sentry and checkmates her husband's imperial moves. The Empress dies, Peter proclaims himself Czar and summons his guard to duty. But his call reverberates through an empty palace : the troops have gone over to Catherine, and he is alone. Making the only possible best of a position of questionable security, be submits to fate and is marched unresisting away.
The play has two great moments : one, in the fifth scene, when the Empress emerges from her chamber and totters crackling forth to die ; the other, at the end, when Peter becomes conscious of his isolation. For the rest, it drags dishearteningly ; and not even Miss Tempest's rocketing sallies can quicken its pace.
Both as the vivacious Sophie and the ruthless Catherine, after she has taken her hard cue from the old Empress, Miss Madeleine Carroll acts with precision and grace : only in the moment of transition does she falter. As her mother, the Princess of Anhalt, Miss Barbara Gott indulges in some excellent comedy, though at times we might expect to wake up and find her in the middle of a Marie Dressler farce. Mr. Graham Browne makes a complaisant Lanskoi, and the childish brutality of Peter is well emphasised by Mr. Harold Huth. But the scene which will be stored in the memories of theatregoers is the final appearance of the Empress Elizabeth, in which Miss Marie Tempest achieves a memorable and conclusive peak of tragedy.
It is a pity that with such sumptuous ingredients the final result is not more crisp. Individually, they are more than satis- fying. If the play is to us a failure, it is so largely on account of a factor of which a priori M. Savoir could not have taken consideration, the English temperament.
DEREK VERECIIOYLE,
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