Sir: It is much regretted that in his thrust against
"a dying audience" that he camouflages as a review of No, No Nanette (May 26), Mr Kenneth Hurren, who seems to think his generation is immortal, should have passed some excellent and telling tricks. He should have pointed out that a global conflict intervened between this Drury Lane revival and the original production diminishing further, much further, the numbers still surviving from the 'twenties; and with the present scale of pensions and the price of tickets it were certainly a wonder if enough survive to fill the first row of the gallery, certainly all they could afford, assuming, naturally, that they could hobble that far.
One can only deduce that something else beyond appealing to nostalgia in so very few impelled the production. This seems the more likely when one notes that The Desert Song and the Maid of the Mountains (of whom there must be even fewer who attended the original first nights around) had already preceded it. In going on to deal with The Seagull, a revival of which apparently he does not disapprove so much, although I would not say its dialogue is exactly sparkling, and unlike No, No Nanette is not enlivened by some firstrate tunes, your critic does not seem to appreciate that the factor that brought back the first is precisely that which has revived the second; this generation cannot produce anything one quarter as good. George Edinger 4 Raymond Buildings, London WC I.
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