"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.
[Illustration: "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.