Play By Princess And Friends Gets Drubbing

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27367, 4 June 1954, Page 2

Play By Princess And Friends Gets Drubbing

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, Jpne 2.

London’s theatre world saw one of the most fashionable of all first nights when the Edgar Wallace thriller “The Frog” was performed at the Scala Theatre by a cast which included many members of the peerage, and which had Princess Margaret as assistant director.

The play is being staged for three nights to raise £lO,OOO for the Invalid Children Aid Association, and since all the seats were sold out a week ago, it is expected that the money will be raised.

The cast of 40 has worked for the last two months directed by Alan Jefferson, and Princess- Margaret has spent much time watching her friends on the stage, among them Mr Billy Wallace and Lord Porchester. Douglas Fairbanks, jun., was the only professional actor. The first night audience was packed with men and women prominent in the social world, and the programme sellers were either debutantes or film personalities. Princess Margaret arrived an hour

before the curtain went up and, after the performance, she and her friends went to a night club to celebrate and wait the newspaper criticisms. “But,” says the “Evening Standard,” “they were not happy about their reviews. The party laughed and danced until the papers came, and left 20 minutes later with long faces.” Most of the notices were friendly but double-edged. The “Daily Mail” said some of the acting was quite professionally good, and some of it quite amateurishly bad. Another review said “talent blossomed in this cast,” a third that the play was a success, and another that it was “an appalling play.” The “Daily • Mirror’ commented: “Socially it is an • enchanting game of leapfrog. Financially the charity concerned leaped ahead. But theatrically, let’s be frank. It was just frogging a dead horse.”

Tonight the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh attended the second performance of the thriller. Princess Margaret joined the Queen and the Duke and the Queen Mother in the front row of the dress circle to watch her friends try again. «