A TRIPLE BILL

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 69, 18 September 1930, Page 5

A TRIPLE BILL

GOOD REPERTORY WORK

I'cpertor.v continues to do the work of presenting to the public literary comedy and drama —the work that would be undone if Repertory did not exist—and does it well; so well, indeed, that financial membership of the National Repertory Theatre Society is not only an afd to art, it is.an investment. Never iv these days does the society's performance prove unworthy oi: its purpose, and its patrons always receive at least as much us they give. The triple bill which was presented lastevening in the Y.YV.C.A. Hall—and which which will be presented again to-night and on the, two■ succeeding nights—was composed of three clever plays, each quite unlike the others. John Galsworthy's had the most grip. In "The Inrst and the Last," Galsworthy presents two brothers —a K.C. (about to become a judge).and a. waster. The waster (Laddie) becomes infatuated with a girl named Wanda; both have a past, but it is true love this time. Wanda's former . owner, a gross bully, breaks in on. them, attacks, and is killed by Laddie, with-Wanda's help. Laddie throws the body in a lane. A degenerate criminal robs it. The police detect the thief, and believe him to be the murderer. To save him, Laddie wishes to surrender, but the K.C. brother deters him, in order to "save the family honour" (and the judgeship). The play surges round this light of the K.C. to suppress (partly in his own interest) the brother's guilt at the cost of an innocent man. At last the latter is found guilty by the jury. Laddie and" Wanda decide to commit suicide together, leaving a letter that will free the innocent before the hanging. But Laddie fails to post the letter, and when the K.C. comes in to find the lovers dead, this light of the law pulls the rope on the guiltless thief by burning _ the written explanation that his suicide brother had left. The probabilities and | the improbabilities of this plot are evident on its face, but the little play clinches tightly on the imagination. Mr. W. S. Wauchop conveys a fairly _ good idea of a lawyer so fearful of loss_ of face that he burns his soul to save it. Mr. Norman Byrne, as the waster brother, was excellent in the more tense scenes; if his agony barely escaped monotony^that was not so much due to any fault of his, as to the play's limited range of action. As the girl Wanda, Miss Mary Cooley i was quietly appealing, and brought out all I the latent womanliness in the Wanda reI created by love, if not all the coarseness that might have been the legacy of her past. It is a play to challenge thought more than to carry conviction. The Barrie play, "Shall We Join the Ladies?" is a sort of first act of a play from -which, the other two., or throe acts have'been sawn off (or have not yet been written). The audience is left in the anas to the central question—who poisoned Sam Smith's brother on bis yacht at Monte Carlo? Sam Smith, after years ot investigation, traces all his murdered brother's fashionable friends (male and female) who might have been m the crime, and invites them to a dinner. Ihus the curtain, rises on this strange dinner party, some members of which have thenbacks to the audience ( (enhanciug fashion effects in the ladies': attire), and none of whom knows the special reason for* the gathering until host Sam Smith informs them delicately of the detective phase of his enterprise. Cleverly, with bright dialogue, Barrie works, out the situation ot surprise, anger, and fear among the beauI tirully dressed suspects, their repudiations, their lies, suppressions, and mutual accusations. The part of Sam Smith, who has to apply the acid to each in turn with consummate suavity, could almost hai* been made for Mr. 0. N. GiUespie. Miss Marjorje Statham was also particularly successful in the method of suggestion and implication which the situation requires. Other players were Miss Nancy Dudley, Mrs. V. G. Webb, Mr. Vryn Evans, Mr. Alan Hebb, Miss Nancy Marshall,' Miss Margaret Oakes, Mr. J. !>-. Herd, Miss Florence Penney, Mr. John Griffiths, Mr. . Jasper Baldwin, Miss Dorothy Miller, Mr. Watkins, Miss Denzil M Then y «me Mr. C. D. Cribble's tragicomedy ("The Scene That Was to Write Itself" and the hardest-worked man ot the evening, Mr. A. Morris Dunkley. Mr. Dunkley is the author of a play already in rehearsal, but there is an. unwritten tense scene, aiid his ambition-is to make the three actors therein find their own words and action. He makes plain to them that" they are iv the throes of the guilty triangle of wife, husband, and lover, and tells them to believe it real and "go for it." But somehow the actors don't go—Miss Statham's pyjamas seem to have absorbed all her energy, Mr. John Bown's fake-Romeo seems to be more take than ever, and the stolid husbandry ot Mr Hector Burns settles down into a stolid*"solid heap—in the midst of which the author commits suicide with the husband's stage-pistol. The moral seems to be that actors eanuot act without lines, or that playwrights. cannot "put oyer j scenes-by suggestion alone. Mr. Dunkley was-strenuous in his effort to move the mountain, and his failure was the measure of his success. • This triple bill is worth a visit trom anybody and everybody.