“OUR BETTERS” IS CLEVER PLAY AT THEATRE ROYAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18629, 5 December 1928, Page 7

“OUR BETTERS” IS CLEVER PLAY AT THEATRE ROYAL.

Some plays are meant to sting us to an awareness of the currents at work under the surface of society; some merely* entertain. “Our Betters,” the change of programme presented by Margaret Bannerman and her company* at the Theatre Royal last night, does both these things. Clever, witty, brilliant, amusing, affording acute psychological studies of scheming minds playing upon willing pawns in high society in England, it at the same time brings to our remembrance the fact that according to recent cables the repairing of the decayed fortunes of the English nobility by* marriage with American heiresses has been fairly* common. “Our Betters” is the American view of the process; but the exceedingly frank cynicism reaching occasionally to the bizarre jars a little on English minds. The plot hinges upon the ambitions of American “climbers” who have made themselves “more English than the English”—familiar phrase in Christchurch—and attained an envied position in society*. The play*wright, Mr W. Somerset Maugham has given Miss Bannerman a wonderful opportunity as the charming and scheming Lady George Grayston, whose husband is such a nonentity* that he does not appear at all in the play, and whose monetary necessities for her “place” are supplied by* the sensuous but fairly trusting Arthur Fenwick, played by Ml Louis Goodrich. The play is Miss Bannerman's from start to finish. She rises to supreme heights in her acting. The

tantalising, charming tease, whipping the desire of the weak Gilbert Paxton, the hanger-on of another woman, becomes at her command the flatterer

of the jealous Duchess de Surennes, or the frail lady clinging to the protection of Arthur Fenwick, or the hard frank woman revealing the bitter truths of the world she .lives in to the young and still romantic Elizabeth Saunders, ever slipping easily back into the part of the perfect hostess. She has in Thornton Clay a man who understands her game perfectly, and who makes no effort to hide the unscrupulous methods by which he'became the lion of London parties; but fortunately against the background of schemes and intrigues we are given the refreshing character study of an unsophisticated American youth Fleming Harvey, whose love affair with Elizabeth Saunders had to give place to the more ambitious match with a very decent Englishman Lord Bleane. In the end although we are not shown the reunion of the true lovers we know it must follow the rejection of the lord when Elizabeth realises the cost of a loveless marriage. Brilliant conversation rather than much movement, is the feature of the play, but some of the situations are tense with dramatic force. It does not seem that virtue alwaj's triumphs, but the loss of it makes father slippery going. Of the other characters there is Princessa Della Cercola, played by Miss Cicely Jonas, a disillusioned woman who fell in love with a title, Ernest a dancing master of whom we have a fleeting but very amusing glance. This was a clever little „ thumb-nail sketch by Mr Pirie Bush, and of course there is Pole the butler taken by Arthur Cornell. Miss Kerry Kelly made a very sweet and loveable Elizabeth Saunders, and Miss Dorothy Dunklev’s characterisation of the weak and supposedly passionate Duchess De Surennes was excellent. Mf A. Kay Souper fell easily into the part of Thornton Clay, the veteran cynic, and Mr Ellis Irving as the young American, and Frederick Hughes as the English lord, both played their parts with well judged restraint.