THE THEATRE.
"THE TRUMP CARD" AT THE STRAND THEATRE. (Adapted from the French by Arthur Wimperis.)
AT last London has got a really witty and amusing farce, acted with cleverness and humour. Mr. Wimperis has not left a single bleak patch in his play, and the actors take full advantage of the copious and sparkling material that they are given.
I shall not attempt to outline the plot ; that would be unfair, for in the chess problems which it presents resides a proper proportion of the entertainment. The three salient features of the play are the wit of the dialogue and the inimitable acting of Mr. Jack Buchanan as the hero and of Mr. Deverell, who, the reader will remember, previously made so delightful the part of the Earl of Clinehem in The Young Visiters. The author and these two turn the oldest devices, such as the kicking of a man downstairs and the gradual inebriation of another, to favour and to prettiness. Nothing could have been better than Mr. Deverell's gradual, quiet, gentlemanlike intoxication. The note of his part throughout is that of bright, squeaky inadequacy. He and Mr. Jack Buchanan are in the midst of a fine imbroglio in which their wives very justly suspect the integrity of their conduct. The most delicately balanced explanations have to be made. Mr. Buchanan goes away to have a bath, and comes back to find that Mr. Deverell has let an extraordinary number of cats out of bags. " Of course," he exclaims in self-reproach, " I ought never to have left him lying about here by himself." " When Caesar came back to Rome," exclaims the valet on another occasion, " he vowed to make the land fit for Neros to live in." Mr. Buchanan's part is that of a man, ever ready, ever resourceful, the juggler who can balance three or four affairs without letting his right hand know what his left hand is squeezing. To the varied and agonizing complications and crises through which he is Obliged to pass Mr. Buchanan gives the most amusing emphasis.
The student of acting, who must by no means miss this piece, ought specially to observe Mr. Buchanan's dexterous use of the powers of acrobatic behaviour which he has learnt on the variety stage. All kinds of little accomplishments, which would at first sight seem quite inappropriate to farce or comedy, are made to add their quota to the fizz and joie de vivre of the whole affair. The three principal women's parts were very well acted. Miss Margaret Bannerman appears at the beginning to be a little irritatingly ingehue as the wife, but I think most of the audience would agree that her reading of the part justifies itself as the piece progresses.
Miss Muriel Pope as the sleuth-hound female who finally unmasks her own and her friend's errant husband is a well- conceived and well-portrayed character, and it was clever to make her quite a young woman. Miss Kyrie Bellew was excellent in the unnecessarily short part of the dancer, " The Great Carmen." Her Cockney accent was beyond praise, as was that of Mr. Charles Groves, who played the part of the valet. In fact, the only two actors who did not live up to their opportunities were Mr. Eric Lewis and Mr. Norman Page as a fussy little ex-colonel and an old B.C. respectively. Here is another interesting point for those who care for acting. All the four principal men very properly exaggerated the characteristics of the types which they represented. A farce is essentially a distorting mirror, and it fails unless it contains an element of satire. While the two younger men exaggerated successfully, the two older men never rose beyond adequacy. I said that there
were no bleak places, but, unfortunately, the last -half of the last act drags a little, yet it is easy to think of several ways
in which what is now a flat end might be improved. But this is a minor point. Hera at last is a farce in which the technical skill of both playwright and principal actors is a Perpetual joy, a play which realizes that it dare be clever without ever for a moment forcing the audience to abandon the delights of mental shirt-sleeves that should be inseparable from farce.
I for one shall go to see The Trump Card again at the
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