The Secretary for Scotland was, appropriately enough, among the audience
at the first night of -James Bridie's new play The King of Nowhere at the Old Vic on Tuesday. Appropriately- enough because, as Walter Elliot and 0. H. Mayor, the Secretary of State and the dramatist were boys together at Glasgow Academy and medical students together at Glasgow University ; for Major Elliot is a doctor by profession (he once bolstered up my tottering constitution) though he has- confined himself for two decades- now to the ills of the body politic. The King of Nowhere made instory in one respect, in that it is the first modern play to make its debut at the Old Vic. As a casual spectator with a notebook, not a dramatic-critic, I found considerable enjoyment in the fine acting of Laurence Olivier, Alexander' Knox and Marda Vanne, among othett. The crux of the play—when is the actor, Vivaldi; a sane man, an insane man, an actor of a part in real life ?—keeps interest, not to say perplexity, alive to the fall of the curtain.
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