THE THEATRE.
"A FAMILY MAN," BY. JOHN GALSWORTHY, AT TILE COMEDY THEATRE.
WAS A Family Man written before the war ? That would be circumstance which would account for a certain lack of mental alertness in the point of view expressed by it. Briefly, the argu- ment of the play is that too much family life is a bad thing, and that twenty-three years of it may change a human being into a monstrous tyrant, a petty sun who sees the members of his family only as planets revolving round his own effulgence— emanations whose independent activity is a notion as impossible as it is blasphemous. Now, it is not only permissible for a dramatist to seem to wear blinkers ; it is generally necessary for him to do so. All art involves a process of selection, elimi- nation, and isolation. It is a process analogous to that of preparing a specimen for the microscope. In no art does this process have to be so remorselessly carried out as in the art of telling a story by means of the stage. All of which is to say that in this case, for instance, Mr. Galsworthy is well within his rights when he eliminates the patent fact that quite as many women as men used to commit the sin for which his John Builder is punished. Only, is not Mr. Galsworthy flogging a horse which if not actually dead is yet one which we have all agreed must go to the knacker's immediately ? We are probably, on the whole, suffering from too little rather than too much family life at the moment. At any rate, his play is very well acted for the most part. Miss Olive Walter as a very shy little servant, Mr. Clark Smith, Mr. Eugene Leahy, and Mr. Reginald Bach were all excellent in minor parts. Especially good was Mr. Bach's performance as one of my respected colleagues of the Press—i.e., the reporter of the Beconridge Comet. But the best performance of all was that of Mr. Laurence Hanray as the Mayor of Beconridge. Every detail of the impersonation was admirable—the slight myopic stoop, the pointed nose, the occasionally missed aspirate, the mild yet feebly determined demeanour. In the one thoroughly effective and efficient scene of the play he was inimitable. This is the scene where the impeccable John Builder is brought up before the Bench which he usually adorns on a charge of assault—a charge which proves only too well founded. Here Mr. Galsworthy has written a scene worthy of himself, full of humour and a good-tempered distrust of English judicial methods. Except for this really admirable "set piece," Mr. Galsworthy has in A Family Man not even displayed his usual technical proficiency. The characters on several occasions have exits and entrances for which there is no better reason than that they are required to be in or out of the way. Again, the play is not kept strictly in key socially. The Builders are not represented as at all the people to have French ladies' maids and butlers, and yet Mr. Galsworthy has given them one of each. The play seems very well received.
TARN.
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