"THE PRUDE'S FALL."
Though the hero is French and takes up his residence in an English
cathedral town in order to rectify our British prudery and show us how to
make love, there is practically nothing here that is calculated to bring a
blush to the cheek of modesty. It is true that from time to time _Captain
le Briquet_ kisses various outlying portions of his "_ange adoré_," but it
is all very decorous and his ultimate intentions are strictly respectable.
You see, he was really just playing a game. Big game was his speciality
(Africa) and this one was to be as big as an elephant. It consisted in the
correction of a flaw which he had found in the object of his worship, the
lovely young Widow _Audley,_ who had refused in his very presence to
receive a woman, an old friend of hers, who had preferred love to
reputation. He, the gallant Captain, proposed to amend this error. By his
French methods he would reduce the Widow to such a state of helplessness
that she would consent to become his mistress. The fact that he happened to
be a bachelor, and perfectly free to marry her, should not be allowed to
stand in the way of his scheme. He would explain that the exigencies of his
vocation as a hunter of big game demanded a greater measure of liberty than
was practicable within the bonds of matrimony. He would be "faithful but
free."
In the course of a brief month (the interval between the First and Second
Acts, for we are not permitted to see how he does it) she has become as
putty in his hands. She consents to be his mistress, and is indeed so
determined to adopt this informal style of union that when he produces a
special marriage licence she is indignant at such a concession to the
proprieties. But once again the Captain proves irresistible with his French
methods and all ends well.
[Illustration: THE CAPTAIN "EXAMINES ARMS."
_Captain le Briquet_ ... Mr. GERALD DU MAURIER.
_Sir Nevil Moreton, Bart._ ... Mr. FRANKLIN DYALL.]
Mr. GERALD DU MAURIER was the life and soul of the play, which would have
been a dullish business without him. His reappearances were always hailed
as a joyous relief to the prevailing depression. Even _Dean Carey_--most
delightful in the person of Mr. GILBERT HARE--became at one time a gloomy
Dean; and Miss LILIAN BRAITHWAITE, who played very tenderly in the part of
_Mrs. Westonry_ (the lady who had lost her reputation), could not hope to
be very entertaining with her reminiscences of a lover whom we had never
had the pleasure of meeting.
_Mrs. Audley_ again (treated naturally and with a pleasant artlessness by
Miss EMILY BROOKE) did not take very kindly to the conquest of her scruples
and gave little suggestion of the rapture of surrender. Further, the
authors paid a poor compliment to English gentlemen by providing the
Captain with a dull boor for his rival. The contrast was a little too
patent. Even so Mr. FRANKLIN DYALL might perhaps have made the _rôle_ of
_Sir Nevil Moreton_ appear a little less impossible. But, however good he
may be in character parts or where melodrama is indicated, he never allowed
us to mistake him for a British Baronet. The only person (apart from _le
Briquet_) who contributed nothing to the general gloom was the Dean's wife,
played with the most attractive grace and humour by Miss NINA BOUCICAULT.
A note of piquancy was given to Mr. DU MAURIER'S part by his broken
English. "Broken" is perhaps not quite the word, unless we may speak of a
torrent as being broken by pebbles in its bed. There were momentary
hesitancies, and a few easy French words, such as _pardon?_ _pourquoi
donc?_ _c'est permis?_ _alors_, were introduced to flatter the
comprehension of the audience; but for the rest his fluency--and at all
junctures, even the most unlikely--was simply astounding. Few people,
speaking in their native tongue, can ever have commanded so facile an
eloquence. What chance had a mere Englishman against him?
The action of _The Prude's Fall_ was supposed to take place in 1919, but
its atmosphere was clearly ante-bellum. Anyhow there was no sign of the
alleged damage done to our moral standards by the War. But nobody will
quarrel on that ground with Mr. BESIER and Miss EDGINTON, the clever
authors of this very interesting play. And if we have to be taught how to
behave by a Frenchman, to the detriment of our British _amour propre_,
there is nobody who can do it so nicely and painlessly as Mr. DU MAURIER.
"WEDDING BELLS."
I begin to suspect that the possible situations of marital farce are
becoming exhausted. Certainly we have lost the power of being staggered by
the emergence of an old wife out of the past. But Mr. SALISBURY FIELD, who
wrote _Wedding Bells_ for America, is not content with a single repetition
of this ancient device; he must needs give us these intrusions in
triplicate, showing how they affect the career of (1) the hero, (2) his
man-servant, (3) a poet-friend. True he only produces two old wives; but
one of them, being a bigamist, was able to intrude "in two places" (as the
auctioneers say).
The wife of _Reginald Carter_ (Mr. OWEN NARES), having first run right away
from him and then apparently divorced him for desertion (I told you the
play was American), turns up on the eve of his marriage to another. He has
barely recovered from his failure to keep his future wife in ignorance of
his past when he has to start taxing his brains all over again in order to
keep his past wife in ignorance of his future.
The First Act went well enough and was full of good words--not very subtle
perhaps, but the kind that invites intelligent laughter. Later the play
degenerated into something too improbable for comedy and not boisterous
enough for pure farce. The two most disintegrating elements were furnished
by a love-sick poet (a figure that should have been _vieux jeu_ in the last
century) and an English maid who could never have existed outside the
imagination of an American. I make no complaint of the fact that in a
chequered past she had married both _Carter's_ man-servant and the
antiquated poet; but I do complain that her Cockney accent was imperfectly
consistent both with her rustic origin an apple-cheeked lass, we were told,
from somewhere in Kent) and her situation as maid to a very smart American.
You will naturally ask what Mr. OWEN NARES was doing in this galley; and I
cannot tell you. I can only say that he was very brave about it all. In a
sense it was a serious performance, the only one of its kind in the play;
yet not serious enough to serve as a foil for the general frivolity, for he
was constantly bringing his own high sentiments into ridicule, and so
burlesquing the OWEN NARES that we love to take seriously.
On the other hand, Miss GLADYS COOPER, as _Rosalie_, his late wife, was
untroubled by high sentiment; she was content to be wayward and unseizable,
confident in the obvious power of her charm to retrieve him from the very
altar-rails. Her own heart never seemed to come into the question, and her
motive in setting herself to recover him was not much clearer than her
reason for deserting him.
Some of the minor characters gave good entertainment. There was a dude (is
that what they call them now in America?) who dressed very perfectly and
said a great many funny things all well within the range of his own, and
our, intelligence. Mr. DEVERELL played the part with admirable restraint.
And we could ill have spared the humours of _Carter's_ man _Jackson_ (Mr.
WILL WEST), whose wide experience in matrimony, resulting in an attitude
alternately timorous and prehensile towards female society in the servants'
hall, was the source of many poignant generalisations. Miss EDITH EVANS, as
a mother-in-law _manquée_, showed a touch of real artistry; and Mr. GEORGE
CARR had no difficulty in getting fun out of the part of a Japanese
house-boy, almost the only novelty which we owed to the American origin of
the play.
When _Carter_ was turned down by a clergyman who refused to perform the
marriage rites for a divorced man, there was something very attractive (to
a golfer) in his protest against these "local rules." This was one of many
good things said; but the play had its dull times too, and there were one
or two lapses made in the pursuit of the easy laugh. For instance:--
_Carter._ "Do you believe in God?"
_Wills._ "Good God!" (laughter).
[Carter _here kneels down to get something from under the sofa._
_Wills._ "Are you going to pray?" (laughter).
Personality, of course, counts for much, and both Miss GLADYS COOPER and
Mr. OWEN NARES have enough admirers to ensure a success for this rather
moderate farce. But not a triumph, I fear; for, after all, the play counts
for something too and, though all the Faithful may be trusted to put in one
appearance, I doubt if many outside the ranks of the Very Faithful will
turn again at the sound of these _Wedding Bells_.