THEATRE
UNCERTAIN JOY, By Charlotte Hastings. (Royal Court.)—IT's DIFFERENT FOR MEN. By Michael Pertwee. (Duchess.) I DID not see Charlotte Hastings's first play, Bonaventure, but 1 am assured that it well de- served its success. That being so, one can only say that Miss Hastings has done it again. Un- certain Joy is a competent piece of writing for the theatre and excellent value for money as entertainment. This is a story of the attempts made to get a small problem child away from his brutal and corrupt father, and, if one feels rather doubtful about the impossibility of calling in the law to help, this is all part of the convention by which this kind of plot has to be worked out in personal terms. It is, indeed, the character that counts in this play : Michael Brooke is harrowingly realistic as Tod, the small boy, and Richard Leech, as his father, gives a convincing interpretation of a sheer brute in action. But the acting honours must, I think, go to Roger Livesey for his portrait of the kindly schoolmaster, who wishes to adopt Tod in face of the opposition of his wife, who has no children of her own. Both Mr. Livesey and Ursula Jeans (as the wife) gave a clear and human picture of a fairly subtle situation. Perhaps their dialogue was occasion- ally a little too sentimental, and it is the greatest tribute to Mr. Livesey that he was never in the least embarrassing during his scenes with Tod. This play deserves to run and will, no doubt, do so. My only caveat is that it could do with some cuts in the second act.
At the Duchess there is rather a feeble little comedy about there being one law for the man and another for the woman. This folk saga is mixed up with stuff about co-education, the facts of life and so forth. Naunton Wayne and June Clyde do their best with it, but that is hardly enough. The only really cheering episode was Eliot Makcham's portrait of a saintly, but understanding, Dean.
Maurice Chevalier, who will need no com- ment from me, is at the Palace Theatre during April.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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