First Person Singular. By Lewis Grant Wallace. (Duke of York's.)
THERE is no dramatic excitement to speak of in the play, yet it is odd to find the West End turning against its own nature and giving it such a cool reception, for it is precisely the sort of entertainment one would expect to thrive there. More like a long short story turned into terms of the theatre (and not altogether plausibly) than a dramatic conception given proper expression, it is anything but alone in that respect. The comic idea is this: an eighty-year-old author of countless successful bumbling middlebrow novels is threatened by an embittered young failure who has left the MS of his masterpiece in the left- luggage place at Waterloo against the day when the publicity of his trial for murder will translate it into a best-seller. The ancient, unwilling to die, proposes an alternative to the young man: the masterpiece will be publishenmder his famous name, while his own new novel will appear under that of the young man. The outcome is a foregone conclusion to the audience if not to the old writer. This would be less of a weakness if there Were a more effective distilling of comedy: as it is, the piece drones on through the cosy drawing-room realism which became a tedium long, long ago. That is to say, it eves us no view of life or of manners, only a middling story middlingly told (perhaps like one of its chief character's middlebrow novels). To be fair, though, the deepest yawns come after rather than during the performance, for the company is a good one, well capable of sustaining interest in the "story line." Felix Aylmer as the testy ancient, Athene Seyler as his wife, Patric Doonan as the young man driven homicidal by frustrated ambition— there are fine performances within that frame of level-headed realism which every day seems less adequate for comedy.
IAIN HAMILTON.
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