"flowers for the Living." By Toni Block. (Duchess.) UNDER-PRIVILEGED personnel
of the lower income-groups (known to our rude forefathers as the Lower Orders) provide all the characters in this sincere and promising play. Lily Holmes comes back from the wars to her slatternly family in an East End slum. As a sergeant in the A.T.S. she has glimpsed broader horizons and acquired higher ideals than are congruous to the stale, cramped squalor of her home, and her fianc6 (though only a corporal) shares the reformer's zeal which impels her to devote her war gratuity to clearing up the many-sided mess over which her mother indomitably presides. A rather tract-like plot, perhaps, but the authoress has huiriour and perception, and we follow with a reason- able degree of interest her heroine's altruistic campaign to make the Holmes' home sweet. Chief acting honours go to Miss Kathleen Harrison, whose study of Lily's mother is a brilliant piece of work. Mr. Barry Morse hits off exactly the ruefully sardonic assurance of the corporal, but Miss Nova Pilbeam's Lily is a little too gilded with good breeding to carry complete conviction.
PETER FLEMING.
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