“The Seventh Veil." By Muriel and Sydney Box. (Princes.)
I HAVE never concealed from readers of the Spectator my penchant for the preposterous, and to anyone who shares it I vehemently recommend this stage version of a celebrated film. The plot, as you probably remember, concerns a young girl who, confided to the care of her wealthy, morose, unmarried but personable guardian, becomes under his brooding supervision a world-famous pianist, only to have her career interrupted and her mind unhinged when Svengali in a fit of autocratic jealousy catches her a frightful crack across the hands with his walking-stick. Its inherent prob- ability was not among the principal virtues of this story as unfolded upon the screen ; and now that it has been transferred to the stage the cameraman and the cutter are no longer on hand to whisk us past its lovely lapses into pure hokum and we can enjoy them at our leisure.
The scene I liked best begins with Nicholas Cunningham's butler and footman awaiting the homecoming of their master and his ward Francesca in Nicholas's house in Kensington Gore. Nicholas and Francesca, we learn, returned to England by air the same day, after an absence of seven years, and Francesca is at that moment playing in a concert at the Albert Hall. "They'll walk back here after the conccrt," says the butler, but does not explain why the two wanderers did not look in before the- concert, or where they changed into evening dress. Admittedly Nicholas is not a man who lets the grass grow under his feet, for although the hour is
late he has summoned to Kensington Gore a portrait-painter—or rather, for he has given up this genre, an ex-portrait-painter—whom
he requires to paint Francesca. The artist declines, whereupon Nicholas blackmails him into gratifying this whim by threatening to republish a series of articles on modern painting which the artist
wrote ten years earlier. Meanwhile Francesca, unspoilt by success, has telephoned to a young man who kissed her seven years ago and is not only put out but surprised to learn that his affections are engaged elsewhere. It is that sort of play.
During the twelve years covered by the action Miss Ann Todd grows up, with great charm and skill, from a callow school-girl in a
gym-tunic to a beautiful lady in a brain-storm ; but the passage of time leaves no traces on the other actors. Mr. Leo Genn plays the saturnine and pretentious Nicholas with the air of a man who has
been cast for Captain Hook but would really have been more at home with Nana ; and Mr. Herbert Lom does all that can be done for a psychiatrist. Mr. Derek Blomfield, as a footman to whom has been granted the secret of eternal youth, supplies comic relief ;
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