The Play

IS ALL WELL—IF YOU MEAN WELL?
Plan For A Hostess
A rich middle-aged woman who blackmails a society gossip writer and in this way forces her to mention her social activities in the gossip column. A woman who blackmails the said gossip writer to compromise her husband in order that she may blackmail her husband and so relieve him of £2,000—a woman who does all this and glories in it—what character could be more repugnant on the stage, and more calculated to feceive hisses, not kisses, from the said husband when he discoveers her machinadons, and from the audience, a tribute to her acting, but not to the character she assumes?
But two important factors have been ignored in the above account of Plan for a Hostess at St. Martin's Theatre—the first is the motive for all this evil-doing—and very many people nowadays hold that all's well if you mean well; the second is the ability of the blackmaileress to bewitch us. We have, in fact, reckoned without our hostess.
The motive for all this evil-doing is the great though misguided love of a mother for her daughter; and the blackmailing daughter-loving mother is Yvonne Arnaud. Tho motive disposes us to be indulgent; Yvonne Arnaud makes us enthusiastic. The latter has all the French expressiveness, mobility of feature, gesticulation, which we like to see in a Frenchwoman on the stage, but she has also that indescribable charm which would preserve our sympathy for her no matter what she did. The dramatist has made good use of this, with the result that we are with her to the end. She is aided by her lines, which are often really witty, and always amusing.
However, there were other actors besides Yvonne Arnaud, and first one must mention Ronald Squire as the victimised husband. He gave, of course, his usual suave, highly polished display, but in my opinion his part was a difficult one to make sympathetic—and this was one of those plays in which all the characters were supposed to appeal to us. He has to make love seriously to the gossip writer (Adrianne Allen) after a very short seduction on her part. To me this jarred with the other sides of his character. On the one hand he was an ageing roue, on the other an ever-loving husband, a fond father, with, no doubt, the old school-tie twined round his heart.
A word about the daughter's suitor—a short part, but not a dumb one. Mr. Home gave a really amusing display of a languid young man, with a heart (but nothing else) of gold, a gift for repartee and an allBritish desire to do the right thing without being able to explain very articulately that
he prefers daughter to ducats, but " how happy he could be with both."
The play was amusing and, as I hope I have indicated, well acted. The gossip writer managed to make us like her—a bit, and Jacqueline Squire as the daughter was charming, despite one awful hat. Of course the play doesn't deal with the Deeper Issues of Life, but it is a very pleasant distraction.
F. B.
Death On The Table
Evidently Death on the Table, the comedy-thriller by Messrs Guy Beauchamp and Michael Pertwee at the Strand, is destined to have a long life, but whether this is a sign of good or bad times in the world of the theatre is another question.
The close combination of the morbid with the farcical is very popular today, and a dramatist who is slick enough can get away with almost anything in this genre. On reflection I don't think there was anything very funny in what Mark Ryder (Mr. Hartley Power) said when waiting for an operation to have some lead extracted from his gangster bosom by a distinguished surgeon (Mr. Walter Fitzgerald) whose son he had kidnapped—just to make sure that there should be no funny business during the operation; nor were the remarks of Lacey, the nursing home porter (Mr. Cameron Hall), witty on their own account.
But put a raw gangster in a clean hospital bed, give him a pretty nurse to flirt with, have a few tough-guys in the corridor to mount guard, watch a surgeon's tortured soul—and you laugh at everything till your sides burst.
Why, I don't know, but I did too. And then having been purged by laughter you are just ready for the morbid thrills : a real live operation on the stage, a corpse that comes to life, the rapid alternation of gangster overcoming good men and good men overcoming gangsters and so on. And I must say that this thriller, unlike so many, does get more and more exciting as the end approaches.
An ingenious, novel and racy bit of work that leaves you wondering why you enjoyed it so much — and a little anxious about your critical faculties.
M. B.
Beatrix Thompson In Series
The enterprising Richmond Theatre has just concluded a successful season of Beatrix Thomson plays. Four plays, each by the same playwright, were to be put on for a week's run each, but owing to the success of the second one—Set to Music— it ran for an additional week. The other plays were Special Delivery, Woman Alive, and Duet by Accident.
It is rather difficult to give some idea of four plays together, even when they are by the same person. This is a tribute to the versatility of the writer who has managed to think up such a variety.
The last play, Duet by Accident, was, in my opinion, the best. Beatrix Thomson herself takes one of the only two parts in the play. The other is taken by Edmund Willard. The two characters—a young girl and a middle-aged financier—meet together in unusual circumstances, and each has to face a crisis in his, or her, life on the same night.
Unfortunately the latter half of the play tails off. It becomes a plain tale of their growing mutual affection, and the woman's long battle to persuade him to fly from justice rather than commit suicide.
Set To Music (set to music by Eric Spear) is of the complications which ensue when two persons of opposite sexes both book the same suite at an hotel on the shore of Lake Como. Both refuse to give way to the other.
In Special Delivery a houseparty and scheme to kill a man who has been blackmailing the lot of them. The blackmailer's daughter complicates their plans. Of all the plays this had the strongest plot and was a really interesting thriller, Woman Alive is about the situation in 1988 when there is only one woman left alive owing to a recent war. This was adapted from the novel by Susan Ertz.