AMERICAN COMEDY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 64, 17 March 1927, Page 6

AMERICAN COMEDY

"THE BEST PEOPLE"

"Youth will be served" is the dramatic theme of ah American comedy, "The Best People," performed at the Opera House last evening with great popular success. The time is the present, the people Americans socially, as wide apart as the poles, and the locale New York. The cast was singularly well balanced. It included too, Miss Beatric_ Day, whose reappearance was heartily applauded.' The story of "The Best People" is both delightfully simple and improbable. Mr. and Mrs. Bronson Lenox, wealthy and somebody in New York Society,, have a son and daughter, who are. both products. of this jazz age, both difficult filial problems. The son is in the habit of getting very drunk, very fightable,, and he falls head over heels in love with'a chorus girl; the daughter is 'slangy, smokes : too much, visits night pleasure resorts that are subject to police raidß, and is. infatuated with her father's chauffeur. What are parents of such difficult children to do in such What can they do, but haul down the' old pre-war^parental banner and capitulate to youth." Mr.- Bronson, senior, is first to waver, and early in the play scoffs at "the hypocrisy (as he says) of fifty years ago when you called a leg a limb. Again, he reminds his antiquated bachelor brother-in-law, who, deplores the wilfulness and waywardness of young people of to;dny that— 'This age is like any other age." "But (replies the brother-in-law) you would not have said that to your father.", "No (admits Bronson); but many times' I'd have" liked to." ' So, in the end, notwithstanding his wife's horrified objections to the carry-ings-on of her children, and, above all, to their determinations to marry in a scale much-below her social standards, Bronson Lenox, gives way, uttering the conventional .."Bless''you, my children," as the curtain falls.: Of course the writers of the comedy, David Gray and Avery Hopwood, had no intention of palming off their comedy as a play of morals. It is no pink sugar-coated dramatic pill. To provoke laughter was its obvious purpose, and it fulfilled that purpose last night. There was never a dull moment, never -a dragging scene. "The Best People"*was accePted for what it was, , American comedy with the foot hard down ou the accelerator. Miss Day was the distracted Mrs. Lenox, but could not divest herself of the English lady role which she is accustomed to play. She was quite unlike the theatrical stock-size New York rich, proud, society woman so often figuring in American comedy; nor was Mr. J. B. Ro^ye, as Bronson Lenox, like a New York rich lawyer with a lucrative practice and a seuae of social responsibility, as American playwrights would conceive him. But, like Miss Day, he stood out as an accomplished, safe, and highly capable member of the cast. Mr. George:Grafton, the brother-in-law, with 'what may be called a late Victorian outlook ori life and manners, was very well played by Mr. William Macaulej;—a little forced at times, perhaps, but justifiable in the circumstances. Marion Lenox was the obstreperous daughter of the house, of Lenox, nnd Bertie, her dissolute brother were both triumphs of dramatic art in their way. The parts were allotted to Miss Helen Audiffred and Mr. Richard Ehlcrs Both appeared to be saturated with the spirit ot their parts, each omitted nothing essential, each overdid, overstreßsed nothing in obtaining effects, some of them sensational effects. Lord Rockmere, an interfering, inonocled, "silly-ass"' sort of character, the customary caricature of an English aristocrat beloved of American writers of comedy, was fittingly played by Mr. H. LaneBuy lift". Iwo other characters also call for most favourable comment, and they were Millie, n ulungy wonM-be vamp with "o heart of gold," pluyed with unqualified success by Miss Murion Lord; and Henry, the chauffeur "from Mizroura," and proud of it, played by Mr. Robert Adams. Thest two, with Miss Audiffrod, in their Bpeceh, preserved the American atmosphere of the comedy, which, however, in respect to its talk was almost bi-lingual. Alice O'Neill, tho little chorus girl, who had infatuated young Bronson, was most naively played by Miss Marion Stcriy; and her gorgonliko aunt Was presented along quite acceptable lines by Mies Eileen Morris. Even the small part of butler was discreetly played by Mr. Reginald Collins 'The Best People" was undoubtedly a popular succesB T last night, as it well deserved to be It will be played throughout the week.