First a quite charming and, what is not so usual, a quite intelligible
fantasy in mime--_The Magic Pipe_: Pierrot, faithless mistress, despair,
sympathetic friend, adoring midinette, and so on. But Mr. JULES DELACRE,
who played his own part, _Pierrot_, with a fine sincerity and a sense of
the great tradition in this _genre_, got his effect across to us with an
admirable directness. Miss PHYLLIS PINSON looking charming in a
mid-Victorian Latin-Quarterly sort of way (which is a very nice way),
danced seriously, fantastically, delightfully, and with quite
astonishing command of her technique--the sort of thing that nine
infallible managers out of ten who know what the public wants would
condemn out of hand as impossible. The intelligent tenth must have been
consoled by the enthusiastic applause which greeted the little piece. I
have a fancy that mime would go far to restore sanity and tradition to
the English stage, and every creditable essay in a delightful art
deserves the fullest support.
It is amusing to see our solemn Mr. JOHN GALSWORTHY in labour for three
Acts over a rude joke. I frankly confess I enjoyed the joke. Cisterns
(its theme) have no terrors for me even in mixed company. But the joke
was not the really serious thing about _The Foundations_, a play that
starts (some years hence) with a mob of starving people yelling outside
the house--dear, stupid, kindly _Lord William Dromondy's_ house. _Lord
William_ was a god of an infantry captain in the great War, and his four
footmen--particularly _James_, the first of them--though revolutionaries
at heart, are ready to stand between their master and any other
revolutionaries in London town. Well, a bomb is found in the foundations
of _Lord William's_ Park Lane palace, and explodes to embarrassed
laughter of shocked stall-holders in the Third Act.
The plot's nothing, and the main joke, as I say, nothing to get excited
over. But the whole effect of the tremendous trifle, admirably cast as
it was, was diverting in the extreme.
Of course it is like our Mr. GALSWORTHY to assume that things will be as
black as ever a few years hence. 'Tis, no doubt, what encourages us to
keep our end up in the great War. But we know the customs of leopards,
and can forgive our pessimist for his creations (for all the world as if
he were a milliner) of _Poulder, Lord William's_ butler, rounded pillar
of the eternal old order of things; of _James_, revolutionary but
faithful (of course _James_ never would in fact have kept this absurd
job); of a light yellow pressman; of a feckless, torrentially eloquent
plumber, whose solution of the class war was loving-kindness and the
letting of the blood of all who were not kind.
Mr. EADIE was a beloved vagabond of a plumber doing a fine part on his
head, as is his way nowadays. But the thing is so good that it is
perhaps ungracious to remind him he could make it better. Mr. SIDNEY
PAXTON'S triumph with _Poulder_ was his admirable restraint--rarest of
accomplishments among comic stage butlers. The effect of everything was
heightened by this excellent economy. It was a lesson in artistic
reticence. An even more notable feat in the same kind was _The Press_
of Mr. LAWRENCE HANRAY. Obviously he could have collected a good deal
more of the laughter of the house if he had played less subtly. I
should put it as quite the best piece of playing in a well-played
piece. Mr. DAWSON MILWARD has made a deserved reputation as the strong
silly ass. He sustained it--with something in hand. Mr. STEPHEN EWART'S
_James_ was a quite excellent performance, not very coherent and
consistent in conception on the author's part, perhaps, and on that
account all the more difficult. Miss ESME HUBBARD gave us pathos
skilfully reserved in her clever study of an old, old countrywoman
turned trousers-maker; and little DINKA STARACE showed quite
astonishing aptitude (or the most wonderful training) in the part of
her granddaughter. Miss BABS FARREN also did well with her rather
intrusive part of _Lord William's_ daughter.
_Box B_, by Mr. COSMO GORDON LENNOX, was just a gay trifle to send us
home easy-minded to bed. _Bobby Stroud_, Zepp-strafer, kisses a pretty
(oh, ever such a pretty!) widow by mistake. And continues by
arrangement. Miss IRIS HOEY was really perfectly irresistible--something
ought to be done about it. She would have reduced the whole Flying Corps
to dereliction of duty. Mr. FRANK BAYLY had just that air of awkward
modesty which is so much more effective than plain swank as an
advertisement of gallantry, and Miss MURIEL POPE played a programme-girl
with all the skill that an artist thinks is worth putting into little
things.
The best evening that I've had in the stalls since the War began ever
so long ago.