CONTEMPORARY ARTS
THE THEATRE
Before the Party." By Rodney Ackland. Based on a Story by W. Somerset Maugham. (St. Martin's.) THE fact that Laura was a murderess need not really have bothered anyone (except possibly her husband, whom she murdered ; and he was too drunk at the time to notice what was afoot) if she had not confessed the crime to her family ; and even then it would not have mattered very much—for the deed was done in West Africa several months ago—if her youngest sister had not overheard the dreadful tale. For a time the problem of how to erase the atrocious picture so vividly etched on a child's mind is made to seem important ; then it too is swamped in the bustle, the familiar, inexorable bustle of middle-class family life in Surrey, and we are left in the end with an impression of cheapness and triviality.
Although it is only recently that people have begun to write books and articles about the middle classes, their upper strata have been quarried assiduously by dramatists ever since I can remember, and a sort of formula or recipe has been evolved to which, rather than to life, playwrights conceive it their duty to adhere. Strip the old of all wisdom and the young of all consideration, add one faithful retainer and flavour liberally with culinary and domestic problems, and you have—or so even a craftsman of Mr. Ackland's standing seems to think—a typical English family of the sort which (as in this case) destines its grandsons for Malvern and Cambridge. They all make very effective puppets—the comically lachrymose mother, the pompous ineffective father, the spiteful unmarried daughter, the sage old Nanny—but they will never (with the possible exception of the last), ever make anything else, and I wish the dramatists could learn to get along without them. Tradition demands that they should practically all be snobs, but Mr. Ackland's are such frightful snobs that they might almost be taken out of a skit on the English bourgeoisie in Krokodil.
Of the actors, Miss Constance Cummings as Laura has the hardest task ; she tackles it bravely and with a very considerable measure of success. Miss Judith Furse, in a performance of some power, makes her sister as revolting as the plot requires. Miss Mary Merrall and Mr. D. A. Clarke-Smith portray the humours and pretensions of the parents with great accomplishment, and Miss Winifred Oughton's Nanny, allowed by the author to be almost a whole dimension nearer to reality than the other characters, makes the most of her chances with unobtrusive skill. The setting by Miss Gay Dangerfield is rather good. PETER FLEMING.
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