THE STAGE "BIRD IN HAND”

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26510, 27 August 1951, Page 3

THE STAGE "BIRD IN HAND”

REPERTORY SOCIETY J PRODUCTION "Bird in Hand," a rare excursion into comedy by John Drinkwater, was presented at the Repertory Theatre orf Saturday evening as the fourth of tho Canterbury Repertory Society's majoif productions for the 1951 season. The production enjoyed only a limit* ed success, but the fault was only partly with the players. Drinkwater's comedy is based on a pre-war English! innkeeper's struggle to convince his family and those who wish to help him that his daughter should not enter' tain ideas of marrying the squire’s son. It is not a comedy of situation; if it contains a message, it is an obscurq one; and for a frothy piece of lightheartedness too many bubbles burst orematurely. There are some amusing lines, and the exchanges on politics were appreciated by an audience more politically-conscious than it would be normally, but the intervals between the laughs were usually far too long. The players worked hard—perhaps too hard at times—to amuse, but making bricks without straw is an unprofitable exercise. Their efforts were not improved by lines being muddled. “Bird in Hand" is an extremely simple story, perhaps an over-simple one, and its ending is the conventionally happy one that might be expected of it "Aren't people wonderful?” say the young lovers, as the final curtain falls. Perhaps they are right but Drinkwater’s characters are neither very real nor particularly amusing. The best part* of the play are in the hands of Thomas Greenleaf, proprietor of the “Bird in Hand,' 4 and his Yorkshire bluntness is a good medium for comedy. His family, he says, has held the inn for the 300 years the squire’s family has held the manor, and "We've always known ’oo'* 'oo. and which ’at fits which ’ead.” He might well, as is alleged, have descended on the young people “like the Day of Judgment let loose on the seven deadly sins." The innkeeper is played by Harold Pointer, who gives another really distinguished performance. He makes Greenleaf the ageing, highprincipled, stubborn Yorkahireman he was intended to be. and he never lost touch with his part for a moment Harold Pointer is an accomplished actor, and he will not disappoint his many admirers with his performance. Judith Laver, as his daughter, was charming and sincere, and if the fashions of 1928 made her look rather like a schoolgirl, she played her role with more conviction than some of . the others. It was a pity she was sent on the stage with so extremely high a colour. This presumably was a concession to the virtuou* country life she led. The play depends to a considerable extent on the eccentricities of Mr Blanquet, one of the guests at the inn. Robert Cartner’s Mr Blanquet was sometimes forced, and he lost too many of his lines to be really convincing. Edna Neville gave a sound performance as Greenleaf's wife, except when she was recalling in conversation the glamour of her earlier circus life. Then she might quite as easily have been telling her listeners how the news travelled from Ghent to Aix. After an uncertain beginning, Maitland Gard’ner did well as the exuberant Cyril Beverley, another of the guests who helps Greenleaf contain his parental wrath. The leading figure in this peace movement is Andrew Godolphin. K.C., played by Allan Coates. His speeches were just sufficiently pompous, and measured until near the end when he appeared to become involved in the air of haste which overtook the cast. Two of the three acts take place in the bar parlour of the inn, and the setting had an inviting, real warmth, very much in keeping with an English inn in 1928. But no amount of wistful thinking could make “Bird in Hand" one Of the society’s greater achieve- . ments. “Bird in Hand” will be repeater 4 each evening this week.