FIVE PLAYS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 100, 30 April 1927, Page 21

FIVE PLAYS

AND SOME IN COLOURS

"Quality Street" and "The Admirable Crichton." By Sir James Barrie; illustrated by Hugh Thomson. London: Hodder and Stoughton. "The Celebrity" and "Fanny and the i Servant Problem." By Jerome K. Jerome. London: Hodder and Stoughton. "And So to Bed." By J. B. Pagan London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Beading plays has comparatively recently become as popular as seeing them. Certainly the published price of many modern plays is very much less than the price of admission to a eomfortablo part of the theatre to see them acted. All plays written for the stage are not necessarily suitable for reading, nor arc aU plays that read well the best for performance; but the plays of Sir J. M. Barrie, "Quality Street and "The Armirable Crichton, may be said to both read and act themselves. As box office successes they were famous in their time. So far as Australia and New Zealand are concorned that time seems far off and dim, for there is no more any splendid combination quite like the BrougbBoucicault performing them in these parts to-day. Besides, it is a moot point whether managements, who are compelled to look at the matter solely in a business light, would be justified in reviving them. Rents, salaries, and other incidents associated with the theatre—to say nothing of the fickleness of public taste in Australia and Now Zealand, and the utrong counter-pull of the pictures—are all higher to-day, and the inclination to take risks in theatrical productions is correspondingly reduced. Business predominates over aesthetic sentiment in such circumstances. But the managements could bo safely trusted to overlook nothing that would profitably meet the public taste, if that taste would bo satisfied with plays of the k,ind that tho BroughBoucicault, George' Musgrove, Herbert Flemming, Marie Tempest-Graham Browne companies used to produce for tho delectation of all sincere playgoers. But failing themselves, one can always fall back on the plays they produced. In the case of the two of Sir James Barrie above referred to, the volumes have the great advantage of illustration 1 in colour, with drawings in line by Hugh Thomson, one of the most thoroughly English of English draughtsmen. These are very suitable book forms of the plays, not only for private reading, but for presentation. The typo is large and well spaced, and tho reproduction of the Thomson drawings may be regarded as very fine facsimiles of that artist's work. Mr. Jerome K. Jerome's two comedies will both read -well and act well. They have no protensibns to'the "literary," are not conspicuous, for their rhetoric, have no sugar-coated moral pills. "The Celebrity" is quite within the capacity of any reasonably intelligent amateur dramatic society, and well worthy the attention of a competent professional company. It shows how an idealistic and gifted champion of women's causes may got heartily sick of his self-im-posed tasks and the troublesome people he has to meet in discharging them. His remedy was simply to marry his cook. "Fanny and the Servant Problem" is described as "a. quite possible play." So it is; and so is "The Celebrity." No .undue Btrain is imposed upon probability in either ease. Fanny, a music-hall artist, met, liked, and married a lord; but she did not know him as such, did not suspect that his name was in tho Peerage until she was taken to his country seat and was introduced to his aristocratic aunts, the Misses Wetheroll —two of them. Her experience is very trying, for she asks her husband: "With an uncle a eostermonger, and an aunt who sofd matches. It wouldn't make any difference to you, would it? You didn't marry me for my family, did you? You did'nt, did you 1!" "Darling (replies her husband) I married you because you are the most fascinating, tho most lovable, tho most wonderful little woman in the world." Curiously enough, the butler in her husband'r family is Fanny's uncle, and most of the other servants are his (and her) relations." But Fanny, at first cowed by the fact, takes courago, insists on being mistress in her own house. There is a tussle, but Fanny wins. The dialogue in both plays is direct, tho plots (if such they can bo called) aro siniplo, too, but ingenious. "Popys's Diary" was tho incoutivc, not tho source, of the theme of "And So to Bed." It was first produced at tho Queen's Thoatro, London, only so recently ai last September. Whether it will come this way is for theatrical managements to decide; but, as this reviewer (who saw it) can personally testify, it is a truly merry play, and should succeed. Mr. Fagan dedicates "And So to Bed" to "my,father at eighty-four because it is tho sort of play ho likes." But he can be assured that there are a host of other fathers, not yet at eightyfour, who will heartily relish and enjoy his play. There is no historical foundation for tho happenings in "And So to Bed," as Mr. Fagan explains, but thero is a seed in tho pages of tho diary from which they might have grown and did grow in hip imagination. One of those happenings is the surprise of Samuel Pepys, in the bedroom of Mrs. Knight, by Charles 11., and how the King dealt with him thero. That is the great scone, constituting tho second act, but other "happenings," all rich m humour, include Pepys's gallantry to two ladios in distress, and a smart passage between him and his spouse when she discovers where he had boon and how he had spent tho evening when she supposed him to have been busy at the Admiralty. Mr. Fagan has well preserved tho atmosphere of tho "Diary" throughout tho play. It needs but littlo imagination on tho part Of the reader to mentally stage tho play and dress its characters as he reads, and by so doing ho can bo assured of a i most enjoyable entertainment. ' Z