"The Clever Ones."
I do wish I had been one of the clever ones, for they seemed to be in Mr. Sutro's confidence and able to penetrate the obscurity of his motives. At first even I could understand something of the scheme, which ran (as I thought) like this:—Wilfrid Callender, a rich bachelor of Harrow and Oxford, has a socialist friend, David Effick, at whose meetings he happens to have encountered a Girton girl, Doris Marrable (pretty daughter of a hop-merchant in affluent circumstances), who affects revolutionary ideals. In order to win the approval of this lady he represents himself as an anarchist plumber, earning five pounds a week; and to the horror of her family they become affianced. Having no sort of intention of keeping up the imposture, even if he could, and being fearful lest the exposure of his wealth and education would, in her present state, alienate her affections, he proposes by practical demonstration to disgust her with the mode of life which she designs to lead. In collusion with Effick he arranges that he shall invite Doris to take tea at his friend's attic in Bethnal Green, and reveal to her the sordid conditions of existence in that quarter.
So far good, and the delightful first Act was rich in promise. Then came the complexities. There was another girl, Rose Effick (a rich relation of the socialist), to whom Callender should have been engaged but for a misunderstanding. It is her business to divert him back to his old love. You would naturally say that, if it is Callender's object to disgust Doris with the life of the people, so that she may change her mind and take him for what he actually is, it will be Rose's object, since her aim is the frustration of this design, to make Bethnal Green as attractive as possible, so that Doris will refuse to sacrifice her ideals when she learns the truth about Callender. Yet it looks as if Rose is playing Callender's game and not her own. At first, it is true, she tries to make the attic more supportable; imparts a pleasant flavour to the meal; dismisses the hurdy-gurdies that Callender has chartered from the Universal Provider. But subsequently she goes slumming with Doris to such good purpose that the latter turns sick of the whole thing. Now, you will say, Callender's way is clear; he will reveal his identity and Doris will be prepared to tolerate his wealth. On the contrary, Mr. Sutko is not to be defeated by his own machinations; he means to bring Callender and Rose together; so he just takes and throws them into one another's arms and consigns Doris to an old admirer whom we have never so much as set eyes on.
A HAIR-AND-TIE ANARCHIST.
Wilfrid Callender: Mr. Gerald du Maurier.
I hope I am more lucid than I seem to myself to be—more lucid, anyhow, than Mr. Sutro, who has threatened to damage an excellent scheme by defiance of the first law of drama, even of farce, namely, that the audience should be permitted to know what the author is after. Nor, again—though of course he was not asking to be taken seriously—was he very particular about the probability of some of his characters. Doris, for instance, was required to be too many things at once. A bluestocking and a sansculotte (not a very usual combination), she was also a woman of the very latest cry in frocks. Miss Nina Sevening looked pretty and wore them well, but beyond this she gave us very little help. Rose, too (charmingly played by Miss Marie LÖhr), who disguised herself as a dweller in Bethnal Green by the simple expedient of a duster pinned over her shoulders—how could Mr. Sutro expect her dainty skirt and smart white shoes to escape the eye of this "clever" female, her rival?
All the same, he gave us much matter for mirth, though the Second Act, which promised so well, was dragged out by interminable trivialities over the preparations for tea. I wish that authors and actors would understand how depressing it often is when people on the stage will insist on keeping things bright and brisk with domestic details.
As for the wit of "the clever ones"—Doris and her mother and her aunt—I don't know how the first-nighters took it, but when I was there a great deal of it (when audible) was over the heads of the audience. They understood all right the humour of things when somebody (not a clever one) said "Damn," but I wonder how many of them appreciated the symbolic force of the term Épicier, or grasped the purport of Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat.
Mr. Sutro owed much to the excellence of his cast. Mr. Gerald du Maurier was, of course, inimitable; but there were also Miss Florence Haydon, Miss Mary Brough and Mr. Edmund Gwenn, all delightful in their own specialised veins of humour—the plaintive, the rich, the uproarious. But Mr. Holman Clark had not enough scope for his unique qualities.
I hear rumours of a revision, and hope that this means that I shall receive an invitation to renew a most delightful evening. For my only real criticism is that Mr. Sutro thought me more intelligent than I actually am—an error that I always encourage.
"Dusk."
Account Rendered, a comedy of some promise, but produced with an extraordinary inadequacy in the matter of what the programme called "the decors," has been very quickly withdrawn from the Little Theatre. But its curtain-raiser, Dusk, is to be retained for the revival of Magic.
That is nearly all that I have to say about Mr. Vansittart's "Oriental Fantasy." It deals with a youthful bride who has just been attached to a Persian hareem. In the garden at dusk she finds a young English traveller (who has just told us what a penchant he has for "women, women, women"—he is very insistent about this), and being caught in conversation with him is placed by her lord in a sack and consigned to the deep; but not before she has explained in fluent verse that in the circumstances this abrupt end to her young career has no terrors for her. But for this courageous attitude on her part I should have experienced greater relief when the hero appeared next morning in his pyjamas and indicated that the regrettable incident was a figment of his sleeping brain.
I thought I detected some good lines among the Englishman's remarks (though I did not like his voice), but I prefer to study poetical drama at leisure before attempting to pass any comment on it. I may add that I don't suppose that that engaging actor, Mr. Fred Lewis, has ever previously played the part of a Persian slave with a taste for philosophic recitation; and I hope he never will again, for, frankly, it is not his mÉtier.
O. S.
[Circular from head office of a London bank to its branches: "Suggested that the Cashier should drop his cash-scoop as a warning to the remainder of the staff that a forged cheque is being presented and that they are to detain the presenter."]
The cashier at our Goldstead branch has the misfortune to drop his scoop accidentally when cashing a cheque for his worthy mayor of our select suburb.
