KING'S THEATRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 21, 25 January 1940, Page 7

KING'S THEATRE

"Nurse Edith Cavell."

Introducing to audiences Great Britain's foremost contemporary actress, "Nurse Edith Cavell" presents Anna Neagle in the stellar-title role. This production by Herbert Wilcox, which comes to the King's Theatre tomorrow, is the thrilling melodramatic picturisation of the famous martyred World War nurse v/ho paid the supreme penalty for her unselfish efforts to preserve human lives. Miss Neagle has the finest role of her career as the devout patriot who died at the hands of a military firing squad. The story of "Nurse Edith Cavell" adheres closely to the facts of the famous case which shocked the world, thus achieving a realism that could never be attained in a fictional picture. The dramatic moments during the trial sequence follow the actual events and the actual speeches, as contained in the 'official war records. And the clever methods by which Miss Cavell and her devoted followers obtained genuine passports for their wounded fugitives, and transported them to'the Dutch border through i swarms of guards endeavouring to catch them, are also vividly disclosed in the earlier scenes. "Nurse Edith Cavell" depicts the career of the altruistic nurse from the time she was head of the Berckendael Institute in Brussels up to and including the World War, her, activities in smuggling fugitive soldiers across, the Dutch border during the war, her arrest, and her memorable trial by a Prussian military Court which decreed her execution. Aiding Edith Cavell in her dangerous but patriotic enterprise were five women, and it was their combined ingenuity which gave birth to the secret underground system that saved the lives of hundreds of war victims, and confounded for a time the German secret service. Edna May Oliver, May Robson, Zasu Pitts, Sophie Stewart., and Mary Howard are seen as these! accomplices. Among the forty-odd distinguished players comprising the supporting cast are George Sanders, H. B. Warner, Rex Downing. Lucien Prival, Bert Roach, and Robert Coote.