THE THEATRE
"Murder Without Crime." At the Comedy.—" Wild Rose." At the Princes.-" The Man With a Load of Mischief."-At the Mercury Theatre.-" Awake and Sing."-At the Cambridge Theatre.
IMPROBABILITIES in a play do not matter provided the author, by that wizardry which is really extreme technical craft, causes you to suspend disbelief. Such wizardry is, however, completely lack- ing in the first act of Murder Without Crime, in which one crass incredibility follows another, and when to these glaring outrages on our common sense we are left not knowing whether any murder has been committed at all, and wondering whether the girl stabbed herself or fell on the knife, or is, indeed, really dead, it is difficult to take any serious .interest in what follows. I am bound to confess, nevertheless, that the audience seemed to swallow every improbability and strain at nothing in its eagerness to be thrilled. Such sus- ceptibility seems to be reserved solely for " shockers " and " thrillers " ; but for that small minority which likes its reason to be satisfied as well as its nerves to be shattered, I must add that, from a critical point of view, Murder Without Crime is a crime without murder--dramatically speaking. All four characters in the play were competently acted, and one of them was so lifelike that it would be almost libellous to mention his name.
It is many years since we have seen resuscitated in the London theatre such an old-fashioned flower as Wild Rose. It is accurately described as " an old story," but not so accurately as " a new treatment," for the music by Jerome Kern is full of echoes as old almost as their originals, and there are " show girls " and a male chorus, with all the glitter and abundance of ancient musical comedy at its most opulent. There is even a ballet, with dances arranged by Robert Helpmann ; the whole show is like a monstrous display of hors d'oeuvres, making up in size what they lack in piquancy. Strange to say, there is some enjoyment to be got from it, owing chiefly to the liveliness and high spirits of Jessie Matthews, who makes her welcome reappearance after a long absence, and to the talent and charm of Richard Hearne, whose representation of a student's " passing-out " scene is delightful
London is sadly lacking in an adventurous " Little Theatre." The Mercury, under Mr. Ashley Dukes, might once have seemed like
filling the gap, but that hope has long since departed. The revival of his own The Man With a Load of Mischief shows that he
has completely lost touch with the taste of the time. This play, in my opinion, never did its genial author much credit, but today it seems more like poetaster's fustian than ever, Some of the plays
I have criticised this week may succeed in pleasing the public, in spite of, even perhaps because of their imperfections, but I find it difficult to conceive of there being any corner of the country where there is left a taste for such lifeless mummery as this.
Clifford Odets's striking play, Awake and Sing, a study of life in the Bronx, New York, reviewed in these columns on May 29th last, when produced at the Arts Theatre Club, has now been transferred
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