The Theatre
[" A HOUSE OF CARDS," BY LAURENCE EUSTON, AT THE LITTLE THEATRE.—" THE Docroa's DILEMMA," BY BERNARD SHAW, AT THE RINGSWAY.] THE exquisitely pretty Polish wife of a rising English diploma- tist cheats at cards, in order to get the money she needs to help her beloved husband in his career, and also—let her confess it—in order to buy herself a great number of very beautiful dresses. Suspected by the malignant, she is pre- pared to scorn their horrid insinuations ; until they set a trap for her at the club and find her out ; whereupon she kills herself in despair.
A fairly familiar anecdote, which might be retold in several ways. At the Little Theatre it is told by the author, or authors, of A House of Cards in a delaying, conver- sational manner. We get, all through Act One, the expected suspicion-scene, so to call it : the audience being early persuaded of this lovely Lady Tremayne's guilt, since we hear that she is in dire money difficulties. Her husband does not suspect, because husbands never do. Her friends are equally divided into loyalists who think she never, never could have done anything " impossible," and people, like Mrs. Blood, who wonder how she manages to give such dinners and to dress so well on a rising diplomatist's salary. (How admirable is Miss Margaret Yarde in this part of the overfed Mrs. Blood And why is she not always playing parts like this ?) Act Two : More conversation, growing more " catty," as Lady Tremayne gets nearer and nearer to the poker table across a clatter of bridge-talk and crossword humour, devastating, 1 must say, to those who, like myself, cannot look at a card without a shiver of boredom. Then, tense drama at last, with the, arrival at the club of Sir HughTremayne to whom I had taken -a dislike, during the first 'act, because he was so silly as to believe that his wife " managed ;wonder- fully " ; and so absorbed in his work that he " didn't notice " the luxury all about him ; though he did find a big unpaid bill lying about in his wife's morning room.
Faced by a scandal, Sir Hugh confirmed my bad opinion of him. Very undiplomatieally, he mounted the high horse in a moment, and " how dared " everybody all over the club— challenging friend and foe, but especially the friends who tried to get him to behave wisely and to calm foes down and gain time. Then (last act) when his wife confessed, he was quite the usual stage gentleman, first reviling her, then caressing her, then staggering under the blow of her death. For now at last we had reached the suicide we had all been expecting, since we heard that Lady Tremayne was in debt.
No one interested in bridge, poker, crosswords, or scandals in high life, need hesitate to go to the Little Theatre. A rather stale plot is not all that the play has to offer " Laurence Euston " has known hovi to enliven it by a sprinkling of amusing feminine types, all nearly as well-dressed as the heroine. There are, particularly, the delightful performances of Miss Cicely Byrne (pretty, loyal type) and Miss Martha Hunt (mannish, good sort, known only by her surname of " Squire "). And there are Miss Jeanne de Casalis, irresistibly childish, easily forgivable for any little slip at poker, and Mr. Malcolm Keen, whose natural, fresh method makes even Sir Hugh credible, if not sympathetic. I may add that Sir Hugh might conceivably have fallen in love with the charming widow played by Miss Byrne, but that he didn't ; and that Lady Tremayne, tempted by a robust and rich young man (Mr. Treven Grantham), resisted. Husband and wife, you see, " adored " one another ; and it does seem a pity that so romantic a marriage should have come to a dead stop because of that little misunderstanding at the poker table. 'Wasn't it all taken too seriously ?
* * * * " We're not a profession, we're a conspiracy," says one of the doctors in Mr. Shaw's medical "shocker," revived at the Kingsway last week. That celebrated first act has scarcely aged. Perhaps one may conclude that doctors change less, professionally, than any other • class of conspirators except lawyers. What changes is the treatment they
recommend—for instance, wholemeal bread and raw salads, instead of the knife, for " blood-poisoning." These cures ought to be brought up to date a little. And surely the aged Sir Patrick (representative of the old school of empiric% with long clinical experience) ought not to go on saying that he has never heard of Bernard Shaw ? He might as well say that the British Medical Council is unknown to bin. Ought the consumptive artist still to base his immorality on the claim to be Shaw's disciple ? The remark makes him sound such a fool after all these years of Shavian preaching ! But this Dubedat always did seem to me less successful, as artist, than Mr. Shaw's much more real poet in Candida. He shows merely as the moralist's earnest effort to understand a youth for whom painting is the one thing that matters. And, as to Sir Colenso Ridgeon (excellently played by Mr. Felix Aylmer), so sceptical about doctors is the atmosphere of this play, that I have never been able to believe that his cure was any more trustworthy than that of the incomparable bedside-mannered Bloomfield Bonnington. " Don't you believe him ! " I feel inclined to whisper to poor Mrs. Dubedat, when she tries to barter one of her husband's (alleged) masterpieces for a place in Sir Colenso's nursing home. Clear your mind of cant, Colly ! Drop the mask, Dubedat ! And all of you specialists, do stop straying about as a Harley Street chorus arguing with artists ! Have you no practice ? Why are you always together chattering ?
I found that Mr. D. A. Clarke-Smith's plausible per- formance of B.S." could not efface Mr. Eric Lewis's masterpiece, at the Court Theatre, years ago. Mr. Egli Percy's Dubedat is perhaps more self-consciously vain than Mr. Granville Barker's ; and I thought that Miss Ffrangcon. Davies, imploringly pathetic, missed the touch of fanaticism in hero-worship that Miss Lillah MacCarthy used to give to this part. At the end of the studio scene, one could hardly imagine this clinging wife gathering herself, in her meek affection, io fulfil the attitudinizing artist's wish that ..he should look her best by his deathbed.
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In my recent notice of The Cradle Song, at the Fortune Theatre, I momentarily confused Miss Barbara Everest', name with that of another actress in the same play. It i, Miss Everest who gives so beautiful a performance as the Prioress.
RICHARD JENNING •
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