"Please Help Emily."
The date at which Emily needed so much assistance was clearly ante bellum, for there is no mention of hostilities, no gun-fire is heard from the direction of Westende, and Belgium is still bathing. But it must have been only just before the War, for the emancipation which the female sex here enjoys is marked by an extreme modernity. A decade or two ago we might have been shocked at the spectacle of a young lady turning up at a bachelor's flat at 9 A.M. on a Sunday in a ball-frock, after a night out at a dancing-club. Lately we have learnt to bear such escapades without flinching. But it was not so with Emily's guardian, Sir Samuel Lethbridge, very Victorian in his stuffy prejudice in favour of the decencies; and it was necessary to put him off with a tale of her sudden departure to Brussels to render first aid to an aunt stricken with mumps. In order to give colour to this fabrication Emily urges Dick Trotter, the bachelor of the flat (as soon as he returns from his own night out), to conduct her to the alleged invalid. He consents, but not without protest, for he is a roué of the old school and cannot approve of these platonic adventures; besides, he is about to se ranger by marriage with somebody else and (a matter of detail, but most inconvenient) is under contract to take her to Brighton for the day.
A fairly preposterous start, you will say; yet the delightful naturalness which Miss Gladys Cooper and Mr. Charles Hawtrey bring to the situation gives it almost an air of possibility. But, once we are at Ostend, and have been introduced to Trotter's incredibly inappropriate fiancée (she is a niece of the same aunt and has followed under protection of a tame escort), we are prepared to launch freely and fearlessly into the rough and tumble of farce.
It is in vain that Miss Gladys Cooper, over her petit déjeuner, preserves a natural demeanour, even to the point of talking with her mouth full; the light humour of the First Act declines to the verge of buffoonery. The devastating confusions which ensue in the matter of identity and relationship (in our author's Ostend you assume, till corrected, that all couples are married); the intervention of the local gendarmerie, headed by a British detective; the arrest of half the party (including the aunt, arrived in perfect health and ignorance en route for England) on a nameless charge in connection with Emily's suspected abduction—all this is in the best Criterion manner.
