THE THEATRE.
QUALITY STREET " AT TIM HAYMARKET THEATRE. BY. SIR JAMES BARRIE.
I srrerose there is not one of us who has ever been ill, or perhaps even who can clearly recall the events of his childhood, who has not been given Benger's Food. We have, further, most of us, at least heard legends of the difficulty of making it. How is it the directions run ? " Mix to's smooth, thin paste, adding the milk gradually and 'stirring continually." And then the food when it was made I I have a vision of a feeding cup containing a bland, warm, sweet white liquid, very wholesome, almost entirely predigested. This is the vision which hovered before my eyes the other night when I went to see the revival of Quality Street—smooth, thin, wholesome, sweet, and, after a mouthful or two, quite markedly insipid.
But for the fact that Miss Fay Compton looked astonishingly beautiful in the dress of the first and second decades of the nineteenth century, the play would have seemed exiguous almost to vanishing point. I really went to see it because Sir Edwin Lutyens had designed the scenery and furni. ture. I have seldom seen anything less inspired than what was produced between Sir Edwin Lutyens and Messrs. Joseph and Philip Harker, who executed " The Blue and White Room " and " The Tent Pavilion." It is rather a pity that so great an artist as Sir Edwin Lutyens should make so timid a &but in a new sphere. Was it that the new medium alarmed him, or that some one in authority watered down more sprightly suggestions ? However, even if the mountain has in this instance brought forth a mouse, the employment of so great an architect is a sign of grace, and the publicity which Mr. Vedrenne gave to the fact that Sir Edwin Lutyens had designed the scenery is a sign that competent managers are aware of the change in public opinion on the subject of stage decoration. The British public is suddenly becoming interested in this subject. This is probably due partly to the Russian Ballet and partly to the influence of Mr. Levet Fraser, whose exquisite work must now be familiar, through The Beggar's Opera, to almost every theatre-goer.
Mr. Levet Fraser has shown people what can be done, and the public taste in this sphere appears to be at the moment, much as we from habit abuse it, rather unusually enlightened. We have put away real rabbits with other childish things. The present seems to me just the moment for a loan display or
exhibition of the plastic arts of the theatre, such as I suggested a week or two ago in connexion with the tentative little show alt the Victoria and Albert Museum. May I repeat here that I believe the authorities of the Museum only have to say the word to find that a large number of models of great interest would be forthcoming for the asking, and that the public, if it were duly made aware of the existence of the exhibition, would unquestionably " support " its promoters by their
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