QUAINT CHARACTERS

Evening Star, Issue 21719, 14 May 1934, Page 12

QUAINT CHARACTERS

NEW BEN TRAVERS FARCE The alcoholic mcanderiugs of Toni Walls, the cheerful inanities of Ralph Lynn, the indignant puffings of Mary Brough, as a “ completely occupied ” landlady, and the sonorous burblings of Robertson Hare as the Rev. SloleyJones, a country parson of the type so much in favour with caticaturists, are memories one will carry away wrapped up in laughter from fho Theatre when ‘ A Cuckoo in the Nest ’ is screened there. , Next to ‘ Rookery Nook ’ this is probably the best of the Ben Travers farces that have been brought to the screen, and its success would seem to show that the public cannot have too much of Messrs Walls, Lynn, and the other Aldwychities and of the witty nonsense of Ben Travers. Walls breaks right away from Ins conventional roles to portray a tipsy old man who is dominated by his wife (Grace Edwin) most of the time. He drinks steadily throughout the film ; and the spirits of the audience go up in proportion as other spirits go down his capacious throat. Lynn is much the same as usual, and just as funny, as an idiotic young husband innocently enmeshed with another woman, and trying to explain his innocence to a bewildered wife and an uncompromising mother-in-law. i Yvonne Arnaud, she of the delicious French accent, is the charming cause of all the pother—the cuckoo in Lynn’s nest —while Mary Brough is again the picture of outraged respectability. She is Mrs Grundy personified when she learns that her inn has been made the scene of a highly involved matrimonial tangle. Her protests against “ such goings-on ” are almost as funny as Lvnn’s struggles to sleep under the withstand when the cuckoo takes possession of the nest. And then a word lor Robertson Hare—bald-patcd and unctuous ns the country parson, whose solemn warning; “Have a care; have a care ” sounds a rich diapason in the whole recital of mirth. , , Finally, there are the local yokels ” of Maiden-Blot ton. Ben

Travers is well-known- for his pictures of quaint rustic types, and lie has never drawn better ■ than ‘ m-. A Cuckoo in the Nest.’