THE THEATRE
Invitation to the Waltz." At the Playhouse Theatre, Amersham.
THE chief hope for the drama in this country today lies not in the West End of London but in the little theatres scattered about the country. A number of these have been started during the last twenty-five years with more or less success. Last week I visited one of them—there being, luckily, no new West End productions. Amer- sham, Bucks, where Mrs. Sally Latimer has conducted a repertory company successfully since several years before the present war, is just far enough from London to have a life and character of its own. It is not merely a dormitory for London and Mrs. Latimer and her associates were lucky in finding in a convenient site a very pleasant building of charming proportions adaptable as a little theatre holding from three to four hundred people. Here they produce, with a devotion and labour exhausting even to imagine, a new play every week. It would be pardonable if, under the circumstances, they achieved no more than a respectable amateur standard but their pro- duction of Monica Stirling's Invitation to the Waltz, a new play founded on the famous journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, would have done credit to any West End theatre, although in fact it had a dis- tinctivewhirl many West End productions lack. Mrs. Latimer had no diffictilty in giving a vivid and convincing representation of the part of the heroine and I have nothing but praise for the perform- ance of Ysanne Churchman as Marie's honest, unsophisticated cousin —a part easy to over-act, and needing a sure touch. No less meri- torious was Nickola Sterne as Marie's mother, while Caryl Jenner, though betraying a certain awkwardness of movement due perhaps to inexperience, was nevertheless so expressive psychologically and so consistent in character that her performance had a most affecting quality. Mr. Antony Stuart succeeded in giving life to the brief appearances of Bastien-Lepage, and I can only describe John Croft's performance as Count Pietro Antonelli as a delightfully polished and engaging piece of acting. The play itself is interesting throughout but lacks tension after the first act. On the other hand it does give an authentic picture of the remarkable author of one of the best journals ever written, and it is never dull or stupid. Sally Latimer's Repertory Players are an excellent Company and deserve the enthusiastic support of the people of Amersham and the surrounding country. They are professionally serious and obviously possess real taste and judgement, so it is to be hoped that H.M. Customs and-Excise will look favourably on their applications for exemption from the Entertainments Tax. This is the most practical way of assisting cultural enterprise in the theatre, for I have no hesitation in asserting that in this Repertory Playhouse we have an example of a truly praiseworthy effort to lift drama out of the ordinary commercial level. Such theatres alone can improve the taste of the public and give suitable opportunities to talented young actors and
Previous page
