“LAST ENEMY”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 886, 1 February 1930, Page 30

“LAST ENEMY”

Frank Harvey’s Play Has Mixed Reception WORDS INADEQUATE TO THEME Frank Harvey’s play, “The Hast Enemy,” has ir et with a mixed reception in London, where it was staged at Christmas time. Most o£ the critics agreed that had he kept his feet on earth he might easily have written a success. Mr. Harvey is well known fc New Zealand theatregoers and has appeared here in many J.C.W. productions, including “My Lady’s Dress,” "The Skin Game,” and “Seventh Heaven.” Writing of his play, Ivor Brown in “The Observer” says: Mr, Harvey even endeavours to storm heaven itself and is defeated not because he is a bad dramatist (his terrestrial scenes prove him to be a good one), but because it is wellnigh impossible to drive three acts past those gates and to light triumphantly on the side of the angels. We do, indeed, hear the angel voices calling—or at least it is shown that those who reach the first rung upon the heavenly ladder are much exposed to community singing. This chanting I took to be a mistake; it creates no atmosphere but that of the theatre. To suggest e t h ereal immensities it is surely best for the proaucer to ao just nothing at all. Mr. Harvey, writing on two planes, has tried to emphasise the transition with musical aid. But I wonder whether stark silence is not the best attribute of golden gates. It. begins in the Antarctic. Two explorers die gallantly and then pass to the First Landing, where the Janitor gives Word-worthian intimations of immortality. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; the soul that rises with us, our life’s star (stars on the curtain are souls which, filmlike, await release) hath had elsewhere its setting and comet from afar. The explorers can return and live again. Alternately (I confess to some confusion about Mr. Harvey’s version of the doctrine) they may return as astral presences to help those who ought to have been their children. If we have spiritual affinities, we may have spiritual heirs; the physical children of others may be the spiritual sons and daughters of ourselves. These are no matters for a wrangling logic. Mr. Harvey asserts his doctrine with a complete sincerity, and we can take his faith or leave it, admiring tile courage that would submit it to the

hazards and human fallibility of | theatrical production. He then applies his principles to a | war-time tale showing how the two explorers, dying childless but now turned into celestial fathers, are powerful to intervene in the lives of their affinity-children. One saves his ' daughter” from seduction by a nervebroken airman during the desperate 1 [gaieties of a short leave: the other j comforts his “son" as he dies in | Prance. Both these soldiers are ; lovers of the same girl, so that a | mundane romance is there as well as ; an affirmation of faith. The story is remarkably well told: ; it has comedy, tenderness, and a constant actuality. Had Mr. Harvey kept his feet on earth, he might easily I have written a success. Perhaps he ! has done so now, and it would be good to see such gallantry rewarded. But it must be said that his efforts to put into theatrical dialogue thoughts that lie too deep for tears and soar too high for prose are by no means as effective as they are ambitious. The sentiment overflows, and the words are inadequate to the theme. It could hardly be otherwise. The Hampstead scenes are really good, and there is a cast of all the talents. As the airman, Lawrence Olivier gives a rendering of the first lustre, as vivid in its nervous brutality as in its later gentleness. This actor, who after some fine work with Sir Barry Jackson’s team, was first in the part of Stanhope in “Journey's End.” ! has during the past year given a series lof consistently brilliant performances in consistently ill-fated plays. May this one break the unlucky series. Prank Lawton has just the right presence for the boy-lieutenant who is the airman’s rival in love, but he trusts too much to quietude, and his portrait is a little faint. Marjorie Mars, as the girl, O. B. Clarence, as her father, and Athene Sevier, as her aunt, are all excellent denizens of Hampstead in wartime, while Nicholas Hannen and Carl Harbord, as dying explorers and celestial fathers, make the best of both worlds. No doubt Tallulah Bankhead must be thankful to break away from the tradition of bedroom or undressing scenes which she had set up at the Lyric Theatre, writes a London critic. For her appearance in a variety bill she has been provided with material of a stronger kind. There is no lovemaking in Edwin Burke's "The Snob.” It is a tale of the vice of social ambitions and the virtue of loyalty to relations, amusingly told. On discovering that her husband has a shabby brother he is ashamed of, Elizabeth (Miss Bankhead’s part) drops her pearls into the brother's pocket and declares he is a thief. That brings her husband to his senses, and he swears never to disown his relations again. “I knew you were the right sort — your Uncle Robert told me so,” whispers the brother-in-law to Elizabeth, who answers that the less said about Uncle Robert the better. All this is acted by Miss Bankhead in a vigorous, decisive style, which is quite good fuu.