"WITHOUT WITNESS."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 213, 9 September 1935, Page 3

"WITHOUT WITNESS."

A PLAY OF THRILLS. LITTLE THEATRE PRODUCTION. Concentrated essence of thrill was the fare provided patrons of the Little Theatre Society's fortieth production, "Without Witness," at the Concert Chamber on Saturday evening. It is one of those plays of recent mode in which the heroine, a fear-haunted person pursued by a relentless Law, has breath-catching narrow escapes, is eventually cornered, and just when the game is up suddenly slips away to freedom through a loophole which has been in plain sight all the time without having been observed until the moment of desperate climax. "Without Witness" might be described as mental melodrama, with its effectiveness and success dependent on the atmosphere and graduated tensity of the incidents created by players and producer. It specialises in the suspended climax. Simple-seeming on the surface, it bristles with hidden traps for the unwary player, but the Little Theatre Society's cast of Saturday night entertained a large house with a first-class performance. In a delicate emotional role Mildred Donald was. the central figure on whom the success of the production hinged, and her conquest of the house by personality and talent in the opening scene was a fitting prelude to the subsequent smooth and convincing progress of the play. There might have been at times more emotional intensity expressed in scenes between her and Frederic McCallum, but of course effort to raise the standard there might entail the greater risk of overstrain. Apart from that Mrs. Donald's Phyllis Trey ford caught and held the unfailing sympathy of the house to provide the necessary hide-and-seek thrills, with the hounds of the law on her trail. Frederic McCallum, in the other big role of the piece, Geoffrey Harting, gave a deft and convincing study of the cool plotter in a good cause who could meet disconcerting situations with a nimble wit. He was rivalled in both conception of the part and ability to give effective force to his lines by Douglas Stark, whose Inspector Mayhew was one of the joys of the evening in its commingling of shrewdness and seeming irresponsibility. Richard Sharp's shading in the part of DetectiveSergeant Tallington provided a telling foil to add entertainment and intensity to his collaborative search with Inspector Mayhew for the right string in a tangle of baffling threads. One of the strong features of the play is its richness in incidental character vignettes, in the first place to impel the action into full stride, and later to relieve the tension. Eric Sadd's picture of a drink-sodden tyrant gives the play an effective jump-off by compelling instant sympathy with his victim, Mildred Donald Then in the second acr the house had crisp and welcome interludes of comedy in Phoebe Clarke's portrayal of the strongminded woman doctor ind her tilts with a dogmatic police surgeon artistically depicted by Geoffrey Colledge. Edward Newling in the role of butler, Maxwell Wilkinson as a man about town, Alan Leonard as Constable England from Ireland, and Harold Metcalf, a porter with Lancashire accent and idiom, all contributed capably to the lighter side of the play. The general production, of which the lighting was a fine feature, and the character-acting were of exceptionally high standard. The producer, Mr. McCallum, by bringing off a success in a venture into the realm requiring the type of intense emotional flights demanded by "Without Witness." has pushed the Little Theatre Society's standard up a notch. The play will be produced at the Concert Chamber again to-night, the season being for five nights.