THE THEATRE.
"THE YOUNG IDEA" AT THE SAVOY.
'I'nE reception of Mr. Noel Coward's play, The Young Idea, has really been very cheering. Here is a thoroughly -witty, rather fantastically farcical comedy in which, for principal notion, the manners and aspirations of the " huntin' and shootin' " set are made to appear exceedingly funny. Now you would have said that the cheap seats would have been bored withthe socialsatire in which two rich sets are contrasted or the fantastic ideas, and the expensive seats would not have liked the satire directed against " Horseback Hall." For out of the bunting season and on off days " Horseback Hall " patronizes extensively such theatres as are devoted to comedies and musical comedies. But the play is a great success. The night I was there " Horseback Hall " sat in the stalls and thoroughly enjoyed it, so did also some Americans : what they can have made of it I cannot imagine, for it is essentially an intimate comedy of manners. Both the young Bohemians, whose topic of conversation is of " vice, art and food," and the hunting set, whose talk is of " seats, hands and women," are typically English products.
The story of the play is this. George Brent and Jennifer did not get on ; they had a divorce by mutual consent ; she took the children to Italy and wrote novels ; he stayed at home, inherited an estate, and married Cicely, a "huntin' and shootin' " lady. The children, Gerda and Sholto, brought up on the Continent, come home to see their father, are as horrified by his set as they are attracted by him, and resolve to rescue him from the hard Cicely, who is making him miserable. She has a lover, and with the aid of Gerda and Sholto is packed off to Jamaica with him, while the father, who has always " been faithful at heart," is taken back to the orange grove at Alassio and reunited to the first wife, Jennifer.
Upon this idea Mr. Coward has managed to hang some really very funny satire both of Jennifer, with whom we were 'to sympathize but who writes what are obviously extremely bad novels, and of " Horseback Hall." There is a truly admirable account of a hunt ball and a _perfect example of the sporting flirtation, with an admirable indication of how " Horseback Hall " is modified and transmuted into Anglo- Indian society.
Mr. Herbert Marshall's acting as George Brent, the father of the boy and girl, is excellent. He has that most admirable possession for an actor or actress—a face which it is a perpetual pleasure to watch. In The Young Idea every muscle is eloquent, while his losing his temper and his attempts at reconciliation with the adamantine Cicely are so realistic as to make an auditor distinctly uncomfortable. Miss Muriel Pope's appearance as Cicely was perfect. I do not Ma, Miss Ann Trevor's Gerda ; she never left herself or her face alone, and was, I felt, unconvinced by the part and therefore unwilling to let it play itself : I do hope she will not let herself be persuaded by those who have written of the play that Gerda and Sholto are impossible characters and are really abstract personifications—they are nothing of the sort, they are in fact but slightly caricatured, and they ring false in quite other directions to those she suspects. It was a pity that Mr. Noel Coward did not look younger—a real " mother's blue-eyed boy " appearance would have added greatly to the piquancy of the part. However, he acted most amusingly. I cannot praise too highly Miss Phyllis Black as Priscilla Hartleberry. Her co-operation with her author was so complete, her interpretation of the part so just. So and not otherwise do the more brainless young females in such sets behave. Miss Naomi Jacob's and Mr. Clive Currie's all too brief sketches of older members of the house party were perfection.
Of course, we shall all begin to predict futures for .Mr. Noel Coward. I should say that he would emphatically not become a " highbrow " ; his plays, I fancy, will never quite take that step over the threshold of the comprehensible which is taken by plays which are " literature " ; but if he continues as he has begun, I and my like thinkers, to whom the commercial theatre is too often a desert, shall most gratefully go to see anything he may choose to write. TARN.
Previous page
