THE YOUNGER PLAYWRIGHTS.

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 21

THE YOUNGER PLAYWRIGHTS.

It is falling to the lot of the younger school of British authors to fill the void now that Barrie, Shaw, Somerset Maugham, and others of an older generation are past the prolific stage of their work. It is, strangely enough, the younger men who are writing most of the plays for the British stage at the present time. Only time can tell, observes an Australian critic, whether the. new school will produce worthy successors to Shaw, Barri£;and A. A. Milne. Ivor Novello is one of the most i successful of the presentday dramatists; he was not born when George Bernard Shaw's first play, "Widowers' Houses," was produced in 1892. Shaw is now eighty years of age; Sir James Barrie is 7&; Somerset Maugham, 62; A. A. Milne, 54. Novello in the early forties, and Noel Coward, at 36, are still regarded as young fellows of the profession though they have been play writing for years. Beverley Nichols -is another "juvenile" of the same group; Emlyn Williams, the young Welsh playwright and actor, is younger still: he is now 30, and is well up the ladder of fame. He it was who: translated from the French, the play "Prenez Guarde de la peinture," by; Rene Fauchois. into "The Late Christopher Bean." He has also written;,"Vigil," "Glamour," "A Murder has: been Arranged," "Port Said,1' and "Night Must Fall," a play described as a "psychological study,"