STAGE AND SCREEN
THE THEATRE
" People of Our Class." By St. John Ervine. At the New Theatre
THREE old ladies sat behind me at People of Our Class. They had come determined to enjoy. Arriving in plenty of time, they composed themselves expectantly in their seats, and gossiped vivaciously about the Prime Minister, Central Europe, and their nieces. When the curtain rose they all said " Hush." But they did not remain hushed for long, for the figures on the stage began to talk about sex. First the old ladies, uncertain of one another's feelings, tittered uncertainly. Was not this a little unexpected in Mr. Ervine, whose thoughtful articles in the Sunday papers one had so much admired for their moral tone ? Then, presumably, they remembered their nieces once more, and recalled that though at times similarly frank in their expressions they were at bottom healthy-minded girls. And remembering the healthy-minded girls they were again at ease. They tittered no more, but laughed delightedly in unison. After a little, when a character on the stage produced some more than usually obvious piece of repartee, one of them exclaimed " I knew she was going to say that." By the time the first interval came they were making spasmodic attempts to guess the next line. It is melancholy to have to record that none of them scored a Bull. But as they sipped the coffee which they demanded as soon as the lights went up, each of them had to her credit at least one well-earned Inner.
Old ladies in theatres are useful barometers, for they form the nucleus of an audience and from what they register a play's chances of success or failure can be measured. People of Our Class generates approval, because it discusses a problem which they can take to concern their class as a whole and appears to prove that the alarm which it prompts is exag- gerated. It deals with a me:salliance. General Sir Gregory March lives with his family in Mintenae Abbas, and Minterne Abbas is Cheltenham reduced in size and transplanted beside the sea. A social gulf divides tradesmen from gentry, and since the gentry are not numerous there is not much eligible company for the girls. Shena March wants a husband and wants a child, and not having met anyone in her own circle whom she prefers decides to marry Henry Hayes, who works in a chemist's shop, and whose father is a butcher. Mr. Ervine has not made Henry Hayes the unprepossessing lout of tradition ; he is a personable young man, who can be distinguished from the youths who attend tenths parties at the Marches' house, chiefly through his possession of superior manners. But manners are not enough to commend him to Sir Gregory, who is determined to remain on his side of the gulf and imagines that he will be able to prevent his daughter from crossing it by refusing to finance her on the other side. When she is thirty Shena will be entitled to £3,000, which have been left for her in trust. She is now twenty-eight, but she wants the money at once in order to purchase a chemist's shop for Henry Hayes, and she cannot get it without her father's consent. It does not occur to Sir Gregory that since the money comes to her whatever his wishes in two years' time she will have no difficulty in borrowing a substantial part of it now ; but that does not matter, because it does not occur to Shena either. The problem is solved more dramatically than by prosaic recourse to a bank, for Shena rereads Jude the Obscure, and one day announces to her father that he can take his choice between having a bastard grandchild or paying up. Sir Gregory, outwitted, affects preliminary disgust but then takes his defeat with an air ; and Henry Hayes is instructed to spend the following morning acquiring a Special Licence.
It is an ending which pleases the old ladies, for Sir Gregory weeps the tears of reconciliation and the father of Henry Hayes, who has hitherto shown no great respect for the Marches and has preferred another match for his son, admits that the courage concealed in the upper-middle class is to be admired. It is possibly a plausible ending, and though it does not interest it is perhaps as suitable as any, since this is a play which does not attempt to solve the problems which it has set. People of Our Class is not, as it might be taken to be, a play about class-divisions ; it is a play which exploits them frivolously, and raises an issue only to burke it. It is
indifferent entertainment, because the frivolities are laid on with a heavy hand. The characters in the first act who chatter so pertly about sex—we learned their sentiments first while we were at our preparatory schools, and thought we had seen the last of them on the stage in the revues of an earlier decade. Nor are the other characters strangers. The General, fighting his last battle to prevent the commercial enemy crossing the social gulf, and his placid wife, who conceals such wisdom beneath her silly face, the resourceful spinster, always willing to abet rebellion against oppressive parents, the naval officer with a jaw of granite and a heart of gold—we may not know them in life, but we have seen them since our youth in that conserva- tive museum, the theatre. There are two characters not from among the exhibits. Henry Hayes is a fresh type of ineligible young man, and his father, composedly rejecting the general's daughter as unsuitable for his son, is a good creation. But two unhackneyed characters out of fifteen is an ungenerous allowance for a play sent out to seek its fortune.
How much do our dramatists owe to the actors who perform their works If one were to attempt to read People of Our Class the chances are that one would not finish it. At the New Theatre the impulse to walk out can be resisted because Mr. James Harcourt, Mr. Bernard Lee and Miss Ursula Jeans are there to be watched. These three have the only parts which are both reasonably interesting and plausible, and they play them to perfection. The other characters bore, and the devoted efforts of those to whom they have been apportioned cannot prevent them doing so for a minute. But it is only because of the actors that they are permitted to bore for a whole evening.
DEREK VERSCHOYLE.
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