Unkindest Cuts The Light Programme's Week of Drama seems to
me to have gone; off at half-cock. One Wilde, one Barrie one-act, one adaptation of an' R. C. Sherriff novel and one thriller—this is really not very ambitious, nothing surely to summon one to song and dance. Moreover, the presentation of The Importance of Being Earnest on Monday nigh was an evilly-omened start. How can you cram this text, every line of which is hallowed, into one and a-quarter hours? The cuts, especially in Lady Bracknell, were grievous. " Woe to the hand thati shed this costly blood ! " The casting, almost in every part, was lamentable. Miss Cathleen Nesbitt has none of the sonority of Lads/ B., and both Algy and Ernest got into mouths palpably wrong for, them. And, faced with the need for speed, the company gabbled, remorselessly—to end up six minutes early ! Something or almost everything, was wrong here
Of recent talks, I much enjoyed Mr. Nigel Balchin on The Uses of Criticism ; he was sane in matter, persuasive in manner. Also Mr. Christopher Morley's talk, An American Pilgrim. I will not deny that I myself take an especial pleasure in hearing once more that bluff and beguiling voice, having swopped so many aerial pleasantries with Mr. Morley transatlantically in the past ; but nobody could fail to appreciate his views on England re-visited, or his individual blend of blarney and de-bunking. The manner was perhaps a little hurried, for he had copious things to spill.
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