A Well-Dressed Play

Southland Times, Issue 21560, 25 November 1931, Page 5

A Well-Dressed Play

FASHIONS ON THE STAGE. (By a Londoner.) A new play at the Haymarket is causing quite a sensation on account of both subject and fashions. It is called “Take Two From One,” and deals with a tragedy of a man whose wife was supposed to have been drowned in a shipwreck, but reappeared two years later, after a thrilling life on an island inhabited by a race who worshipped her as a goddess. This was due to the fact that a lady conjurer was also washed up with her and kindly did tricks with snakes and other livestock. The natives thought the fair damsel from whose hair the snakes were drawn of greater consequence than the light-fingered conjurer who was old and plain. She was rewarded with a small alligator which had been cleaned out and filled with precious stones. With this baggage she returned with the aid of an aeroplane which had swooped over her island and discovered her plight. On her return she found that her adoring husband had paid her the compliment of taking a successor more docile and differently beautiful. Innumerable relatives add fun to the plot, which is supposed to be laid in Spain where mothersun-law live in part of the house to which their sons bring their brides. The mother-in-law is not at all pleased to see the first daughter-in-law back and the husband, who is a lawyer, is torn between his two charmers, both of whom he loves for their different qualities. The end shows the husband fleeing in a cab which both ladies are claiming as each one wishes to depart and leave him with the other, the returned wife perhaps because he seems a trifle tame after the exciting worshippers and the second for moral reasons.

On board the ship before it goes down the lovely bride, played by Gertrude Lawrence, the most vivid of the younger women, has a gorgeous frock in coral embroidered net, looking like lace, made with an oval cape of its own material and the inevitable back draperies floating into a train. With this she wears a scarf like a cowl wrap of vivid green chiffon. A strange chalk-white dress in matt satin, high-waisted, and on strictly Empire lines, without any undue draping, the satin falling round the figure in long lines, was worn by the young maiden who was drowned when the ship went down, and whose body was supposed to be that of the bride as she had borrowed her ring. One of the best dresses of the other “young things” on board was in brown, which is a strong favourite this year of faille and was made with a stiffened basque, and a very full circular skirt cut on the cross.

Later in the play Miss Lawrence has a simple frock of white and gold lame with gold shoulder straps and a gold belt which is allowed to drape into simple folds without any bustle or apron fullness and but for the fullness and length of the skirt might have been one of the models of last season.

The second wife, played by Miss Peggy Ashcroft (who made a sensation as Desdemona with Paul Robeson as Othello, and shocked elder Mayfair by really kissing the dusky Moor during the play), has some pretty dresses.

The first is a dinner-dress in tea-rose chiffon made with the apron flounces and tied at the back at the waist and again lower down. Later, she appears again in an apron-frock, this time in saxe blue silk, shorter, as are the day frocks and worn with a subtle glengarry hat in black with a saxe blue centre.

The hats of the moment are again in a state of flux. They change from week to week.