AT THE PLAY.
"THE OLD LADY SHOWS HER MEDALS."
Mrs. Dowey (actually a virgin spinster), felt herself out of it because she had no son at the Front to talk about. I gathered that it was not so much a case of unsatisfied yearning for motherhood, as that she wanted to hold her own with the other charwomen who were represented in the trenches. So she assumed the relationship of an anonymous marraine towards a certain unknown namesake in the Black Watch, and made boastful pretence of having received letters from her son.
Suddenly she is confronted with this Private Dowey, home on leave—a lonely soldier with no family ties. The joy that she had taken in her imagined sense of proprietorship is dashed by fear of exposure and of possible resentment on his part. At first he treats her intrusion almost brutally, but is soon mollified by the offer of food and other hospitality; and by the time his leave is up he has developed an almost filial regard for her. Their parting is as the parting of a tender-hearted mother and a rather unemotional son. The pathos of this scene, though designed and interpreted with a very sensitive restraint, was comparatively obvious—a commonplace, indeed, of these heart-rending days. There was a far more subtle and original note of pathos in the contrast between the brusque humour of the man's casual acceptance of the situation and the timorous, adoring, dog-like devotion of the woman. Here tears and laughter were never far apart.
I could wish that the impression left by this picture had not been a little spoiled by the final scene, in which she lingers lovingly over the medals and uniform of the dead soldier. No good purpose, dramatic or other, was served by this gratuitous appendage to a finished work of art.
Miss JEAN CADELL was simply wonderful; and Mr. MULCASTER, as Private Dowey, typically Scottish in his cautious reservations, was admirable. Mr. EDGAR WOOD played capably as one of our many eligible but non-combatant clergymen; and the chorus of aggressively humorous charwomen, though perhaps they had rather too much to say, said it very well.
"SEVEN WOMEN" AND ONE SAILOR.
Leonora ... Miss IRENE VANBRUGH.
Captain Rattray, R.N ... MR. GORDON ASH.
Sir JAMES BARRIE'S other one-Act play, Seven Women (all rolled into one), suffered, as might be expected, from compression. Leonora had to be a clinging motherly creature, a desperate flirt, a gifted humourist, a woman without humour, a murderess (out of an old play by the same author), and two other types which escape me. In the course of about a quarter of an hour she had to give a succinct précis of the different moods which her versatile personality might in actual life conceivably have assumed if she had had a month to do it in. Miss IRENE VANBRUGH, with her swift humour and her skill as a quick-change artist, naturally revelled in this tour de force, and, thanks to her, the author came very near to being justified of his caprice.
Between these two plays was sandwiched Mr. A.A. MILNE'S
"WURZEL-FLUMMERY."
There was never any doubt about the freshness and spontaneity of Mr. MILNE'S humour. The only question was whether an author so fastidiously unstagey, who never underlines his intentions, would be able to accommodate himself to the conditions of a medium that discourages the elliptical method. Well, he did it, and very artfully. He began by making concessions to the habits of his new audience. He wouldn't try them too high at first. In the person of Robert Crawshaw, M.P. (Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR), he introduced them to a more or less conventional type—exposed, it is true, to a very unusual test of character but dealing with it as such a type was bound to deal. Then, having inspired confidence, he created a rarer atmosphere, and in Denis Clifton, a blend of solicitor and play-wright, he produced a figure of fantasy whose delightfully irresponsible humour might have found his audience a little shy at an earlier stage. There was a real note of distinction, extraordinarily well maintained, in Clifton's dialogue with Crawshaw and the boy-clerk, and Mr. MILNE was particularly fortunate to have the part interpreted by Mr. DION BOUCICAULT, who developed qualities undreamed of in my previous estimation of his gifts.
When that inveterate cynic, Anthony Clifton, made a will (it is not Mr. MILNE'S fault that, since he wrote his play before going out to the Front, we have had two others turning on eccentric bequests) leaving £50,000 each to two perfect strangers on the condition that they adopted the preposterous name of Wurzel-Flummery, he hoped to have the grim satisfaction of witnessing, from the grave, an exhibition of human weakness. Of the two legatees—politicians on opposite sides of the House—Crawshaw, whose whiskers gave him the air of a successful grocer of the mid-Victorian period, found reasons sufficiently convincing to himself for accepting the testator's terms; while Richard Meriton, who had little besides his salary as an M.P., took the high line of proper pride and declared his determination to refuse. Mr. MILNE, by the way, did not specify the respective politics of these two, but I judge, from my knowledge of his own, that Crawshaw was meant to be a Tory and Meriton a Liberal.
The latter eventually succumbed to pressure on the part of Crawshaw's daughter, who cared nothing for names so long as she could marry the man of her choice—a prospect denied to her by her father, who thought little of poor men. Meanwhile Meriton's lofty attitude of general contempt for money, and particular contempt for it when offered on degrading terms, gave scope for a little serious relief.
THE POLITICIAN AT HOME.
Robert Crawshaw, M.P ... MR. NIGEL PLAYFAIR.
Mrs. Crawshaw ... MISS HELEN HAYE.
There are, of course, more ways of viewing the question than could be compressed into so short a play. Myself, I confess to a sneaking sympathy with the standpoint of Crawshaw. Money for him did not mean mere self-indulgence; it meant outward show—a house in a better neighbourhood, a more expensive car, a higher status in the opinion of his world—all the things that somehow help in what is called a career. By accepting the fifty thousand pounds he would gain something in the public eye; by assuming the name of Wurzel-Flummery he would lose something. He weighed the two against one another, and concluded that he would gain more than he would lose. This argument furnished a good enough motive according to his lights.
Meriton, on the other hand, after professing to prefer a clean heart to filthy lucre, is persuaded by Violet Crawshaw, who argues that he would surely make any sacrifice to save her from starving, and she was starving for love. So he yields, saying, in effect, to Honour, "I love thee, dear; I love thee much; but I love Violet more." Incidentally he takes care to overlook the fact that he was not nobly suffering an indignity for the sake of a great cause—such, let us say, as the founding of a hospital—but that he himself stood to gain at least as much as the girl. I am almost afraid that Meriton was a bit of a hypocrite. Certainly, in view of his exalted standards, he came out of the business worse than Crawshaw did. Perhaps, after all, Mr. MILNE meant him to be a Tory.
But I must not exploit the pleasant field of casuistry opened up by the author's theme, but content myself with complimenting him very heartily on his share of this triple bill, in which, at the first attempt, he held his own in the company of so experienced an artist as Sir JAMES BARRIE. I ought to add that he had an excellent cast, very quick to appreciate and reproduce the iridescent gaiety of his humour.
O.S.
"MOTORS & CYCLES.
Wanted to purchase a few good 1916 laying Pullets."—South Bucks Free Press.
Having regard to the second item in the heading a correspondent suggests that "Pullets" is a misprint for "Pushits."
From a feuilleton:—
She had not wanted to come at all, for she avoided everyone now. But Olive had begged her, with ears in her eyes."—Daily Paper.
If Olive was, as we are inclined to suppose, a flapper, she was remarkably well equipped.
The Padre. OWING TO A COLD, PRIVATE STAYER WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SING 'FROM SATURDAY NIGHT TILL MONDAY MORNING' AS INTENDED, BUT SERGEANT STICKETT HAS KINDLY CONSENTED TO PLAY 'FOR ALL ETERNITY,' AND AS IT WILL THEM BE GETTING! RATHER LATE WE WILL CONCLUDE WITH THE NATIONAL ANTHEM."