THEATRE
Pygmalion. By Bernard Shaw. (St. James's.) —The Dance Dress. By Michael Voysey. (Embassy.)
THE background is charming. Eliza Doo- little is charming. Colonel Pickering is charming. Higgins is charming (was he meant to be ?). Everything is for the best in the best of possible Wimpole Streets. The only spectres are the ghosts of the inhabitants of Largelady Hall—large ladies once, per- haps, but now so sadly diminished that it is impossible to bear them any malice. The appeal of, the play centres on the attraction of a state of things where it was still possible to do a Cophetua. Shaw, in fact, was his own Higgins. After creating a public which regarded him as a teacher, his teaching has resulted in his being regarded as a period piece by the same public. They too have walked out on him.
But is the door slammed between author and audience as irrevocably as it was between Higgins and Eliza ? Not if we are to judge by the laughter which greeted every well-polished scintillation in this most hackneyed of plays. Even the Great Aus- tralian Adjective got its delighted roar. Jokes like wine are said to be the better for keep- ing, but I should have thought there were
limits. However, don't let's complain. The diversion is innocent enough, and the production moves smoothly from witticism to witticism. John Clements manages a' splendidly dictatorial Higgins. When he sticks his jaw out, we are more than ever impressed by Eliza's daring to stand up to him, and his interpretation of the raptures of a phonetician has a professional ring to it. Kay Hammond is less happily cast as Eliza : the true Lissom Grove twang is missing in the first scenes, and her exit in the last act did not convince me that the play can bear a happy ending. Yet perhaps this is unfair : I have seen -Miss Hammond so often in her special light comedy personality that I tend to hear the beating of its wings whenever she appears on the stage. There were no false notes in Athene Seyler's sketch of Mrs. Higgins or Nicholas Hannen's Colonel Pickering, and, though Charles Victor was a subdued Doolittle, this only made his enforced con- version to middle-class morality the more pathetic.
• Michael Voysey's new play has a simple plot : boy meets girl, girl wants dance dress, boy kills old woman to get it, boy gets caught. Crime and, Punishment, in-fact, but with no moral drawn either way. Now, for this sort of thing to succeed, there must be poetry. Straight tragedy is poetic or nothing, and without an interior dynamic of some kind the plot would seem banal. It says something for Mr. Voysey that this difficulty has not daunted him. His language is shot with gleams, a frustrated poetry makes itself felt everywhere, and the play very nearly comes off. However, there are certain technical faults : the first act is too long, the second act could do with some cutting as well, and, in general, there is too much non-dramatic dialogue. Neil McCal- lum and Helena Hughes as Rickie and Fay do their best to cover these gaps, but are not quite up to it. Mr. McCallum's accent recalls the Bowery rather than Poplar, while Miss Hughes too often relapses into wide- eyed despair. Una Victor made the most of a Searle schoolgirl in reduced circum- stances, and Robert Mitchell's production was in the best traditions of Socialist realism (Glasgow, not Moscow). This was far more stimulating than most West End pro- ductions of new plays. When Mr. Voysey has gained complete control of his medium, he should do something very considerable.
ANTHONY HARTLEY
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