"A Kiss for Cinderella."
No well-fed person need ever quite expect to understand one of Sir J. M. Barrie's mystery plays at a single sitting. That's one of his best trumps, of course. But it always seems to me that, like so many writers of genius, he never quite knows what are his best and what his poorest things, and just tosses them to us to sort out for ourselves. In this new instance, to work off a piece of strictly professional criticism, it is clear that both prologue and epilogue are much too protracted. It is a sound dramatic canon, which not even our most brilliant chartered libertine of stage-land can flout with impunity, not to keep your audience in too long a suspense while preparing your salient theme, nor, after quickening their interest and firing their imagination, to chill with the obvious or distract with the irrelevant.
Sir James's Cinderella is maid-of-all-work to the housekeeper of a retired humourist turned painter (Mr. O. B. Clarence), a vague peppery sentimental old bachelor with an ideal of which a full-sized cast of the "Venus di Milo" stands for symbol in his studio. Cinderella is dumpy and plain (that is the idea which Miss Hilda Trevelyan tries loyally but without much success to suggest to us), but she has the tiniest possible feet. Regretfully admitting the superiority of Venus's "uppers" she takes heart of grace, knowing from history how important in princely eyes is her own particular endowment. She is always asking odd questions, such as "why doctors ask you to say ninety-nine" and tailors measuring gentlemen's legs call out "42-6; 38-7." She also has a queer penchant for stealing boards, betrays some connection with a firm, Celeste et Cie. of Bond Street, and knows some German words. Which concatenation of facts justifies the old bachelor in consulting a friendly policeman (Mr. Gerald du Maurier). Bond Street turns out to be a mean street, Celeste et Cie the name under which Cinderella trades, dealing in medical treatment, shaves, friendly counsel or dressmaking all at a penny fee. Also she keeps in a Wendyish sort of way a crêche for orphan babes in boxes evidently made of the borrowed boards.
Our policeman, coming to work up his case, loses his heart. But Cinderella's mind is preoccupied with her ball. Ill from overwork and underfeeding, she wanders into the street, falls faint—and dreams her ball. Whereupon our authentic magician, coming to his own, lifts a curtain of her queer little mind and gives us an all too short glimpse of the state function, with an h-dropping, strap-hanging King and Queen out of a pack of cards; their disdainful Prince, who is none other, of course, than our policeman done into a bewigged Monsieur Beaucaire; a moody and peremptory Peer, Lord Times; the Censor (black-visored, with an axe); a grotesquely informal Lord Mayor; a bevy of preposterous revue beauties with their caps set at the Prince, against an all-gold background with the orphans babbling in a royal box above the throne. Of course you have the heroine's belated entry, her triumph and her abrupt flight, and the voice of the distraught Prince crying after her, which is of course the voice of her own policeman, who finds her and takes her to hospital. Then convalescence in a cottage (alleged, really a palace) by the sea and the final declaration of "romantical" policeman's love.
Sir James banked heavily on Miss Hilda Trevelyan as his Cinderella. The English tradition of manufacturing parts to fit your players, instead of training players to create your parts, was never more shrewdly followed. She was most adorable in the exquisite business of arranging the offer of her policeman's hand. Mr. du Maurier's bobby was as delightfully honest, plain-witted, heavy-booted and friendly a fellow as ever held up a bus or convoyed a covey of children across a street. But as the Prince, who was "so blasted particular," he had a chance of showing that rare talent for the grotesque which no part has given him since his inimitable Captain Hook, I wish indeed we could see more of him in this rich vein. Mr. Clarence was the vague old gentleman (or the vague old gentleman, Mr. Clarence) to the life. Miss Henrietta Watson, as the hospital doctor, bullied her patients and probationers in the approved manner of medical autocrats of the gentler sex. An excellent Lord Mayor (Mr. Liston Lyle), an irrepressible wounded Tommy by Mr. A. E. George and an aristocratic probationer by Miss Elizabeth Pollock, were notable performances. Many others also ran—and ran well. The piece should do the same.
T.