23 AUGUST 1946, Page 11

THEATRE

Clutterbuck. By Benn W. Levy. At Wyndham's.

Tuts play smells of, among other things, moth-balls. Its theme is sexual promiscuity, its setting is a pleasure-cruise, and its characters belong to that never-never-demi-monde on whose man- power our more daring dramatists made such heavy demands in the zo's and 3o's of this century. It can never be anything but a pleasure to watch Mr. Basil Radford and Mr. Naunton Wayne, and when it comes to swapping libidos—and in this play it never comes to anything else—Miss Cummings, Miss Burke and Miss Lewis can lay on the requisite espieglerie with zest and charm. But to succeed in this genre you need to bring something to it—a new approach, a fresh style, or at least a professional skill sufficient to revitalise the fly-blown formula. Mr. Levy disappoints us in this respect. The result is Lonsdale-and-seltzer, and even the seltzer