Why was this particular play chosen? I had a glance at it briefly and thought it quite a sound, actable Job, but quite obviously it is not. TC was, in effect, wrestling with something unplayable except by most skilful actors. The opening is bad, and the writing uneven. There are far too many cliches used and some of the characters seem a trifle unreal. However, I honestly do not know whether the play suffered because of the actors, or vice versa.

With two exceptions, the acting was uniformly poor. Mr. Henderson, as Uncle Harry, had a tremendous task to portray the development of a young man mothered by his two acid-tongued sisters into a calculating murderer, and from there into a psychopathic. He was not able to do it Mr. Henderson's chief difficulty is that he looks far too pleasant a young man to do anything of the sort, and his makeup was so very sketchy that he had nothing at all to help him in his efforts. (I may say here that the makeup was one of the worst features of the play.) The part of Uncle Harry is intensely dramatic, and calls for great emotional reserves, which were not available. The two sisters, played by Brenda Jane and Aileen Casey, were extremely undistinguished. I don't think they knew their parts well enough, and I surmise that they had not thought about them a great deal. The scenes between these two women give considerable scope for good acting, and it is a pity that advantage was not taken of that scope.

I am a trifle intrigued about the young lady who played Miss Phipps. I found it difficult to decide whether she was really trying to act, or whether she is like that in real life. It must be the latter, because surely arms akimbo and sultry sidelong glances with the lips curled aren't really the essential attributes of a suspicious barmaid. However, she looked fine. Nona (Julie Matson) I found a curious character indeed, but this is largely the fault of the writing. I didn't know what she was doing most of the time she was on the stage, and the poor girl obviously suffered with the paltry props and doorways she had to work with. David Hempleman as George Waddy and Peter Coleman as Ben I found very acceptable because they didn't try to be anything except their cheerful two selves. Mr. Coleman was fortunate in being able to drink what appeared to be two handles of real beer, a thing I never thought to see on a Training College stage. Mr. Albert Moore as Mr. Jenkins I found indescribably tedious, The play has a bad opening, but with a little thought it might have been jollied along a bit and the worst bits passed over. Mr. Moore had the unenviable task of appearing in this opening scene as a sententious successful small-time commercial traveller.

The two exceptions I noted above were the Blake of Brian Brimer and the Governor of Warren Thompson. Mr. Brimer, who is [unclear: usually] very capable, was excellently cast as a podgy innkeeper, and was about the only person in the play to sustain any sort of character. Mr. Thompson, I surmise, transferred his everyday character on to the stage, but he was fortunate in getting away with a part which called for exactly that sort of character. I doubt whether he would be so successful in a role which called for acting of even the most elementary type.

I must add to this doleful tale a word about the sets. Why have them if they are going to be so terrible? Drapings would have done just as well, and wouldn't have made the audience so acutely uncomfortable. A door had to be made into the kitchen, and the result looked like the little portal in Alice in Wonderland. What is the use of having a door through which every entrance must be made sideways like a crab? The wierdest effect of the evening was the entrance with a loaded tea tray of the maid, through the curtains leading to the rest of the house. When she had set the table, she went out through the kitchen door, which she hadn't been able to use before, as it was too small for both tray and maid to come through. I have to criticise also the placing of the furniture. In the six acts there were three different sets, but each one had been arranged so that there was a table with chairs on the prompt side, balanced on the o.p. side by another group of piano, or sofa, or easy chair. It was rather a strain to find the same type of set in each scene.

I hope that this review will not cause any heartburnings at Training College, but it is made necessary because of the difference between this play and the major production of last year, Our Town. TC will no doubt remember that I thought this the best production in many years in Wellington, and I find it saddening that the drama club should slide so far in twelve months. For heaven's sake pick a decent play next year.

Film

*** Melodrama

None but the Lonely Heart is a lengthy film of a type very popular of late—all about Life. It is supposed to be about life in the slums of London, and it has lots of emotional acting of the breast-clutching brand. The slums portrayed have, however, been cleaned up a good deal in their translation to the screen. Readers of Llewellyn's book will remember the slime oozing from the cracks in the floor and the scum floating on the surface of the water in the basin, and generally the sordid hell of the East End. There are some of the most revolting descriptions of actual physical living conditions, and I was rather surprised to find [gap — reason: illegible] Mott's squalid little back kitchen transformed into a smug Dickensy parlour with the kettle on the hob and a very clean tablecloth. Ma herself seems to have had a wash, too. The only concession left to Mr. Llewellyn, indeed, is that she wears a character hat all the time, indoors and out. However, it may well be that this criticism is unjust, because I gagged so much on the book that I put it down unfinished and I got so fed-up with the film that I left at about the hour-and-forty-minute mark. What Hollywood has done to the end I can thus only surmise, but I wouldn't mind betting that Virtue is squared somehow and the assembled cast walk forward into a rosy sunset.

Now, this film is a beautiful example of what happens to novels about Life which go on to the screen. They are nearly always long, and usually sordid, and Hollywood tries to get everything in. This, of course, is impossible, and so we are presented with the big moments tied together with a very tenuous thread. The effect is very disconcerting. I dizzily asked myself several times how some sequences could possibly have anything to do with those preceding them. One could almost suspect that, having got tangled hopelessly in one particular scene, the producer just started all over again on another tack. I was particularly struck by the scanty tracing of Ernie from a no 'count bum to a small-time crook, and I would like to question also the fifty pounds a week which Mordinoy was supposed to be paying him; it appeared very easy money indeed to me; what was the gang doing? A single brief reference to a "job" in a fur warehouse doesn't seem to me to indicate the real big-time crookedness.

Mr. Cary Grant is, I think, not very good as Ernie Mott. I had a sneaking feeling all the time that he wasn't Ernie, but just Cary Grant pretending to be Ernie. Ethel Barrymore plays Ma, and I regret to reveal that she is rather bad. Ma has A Cancer, see, and Miss B. has it in the stagiest possible manner, with The Tablets, and the grinning-and-bearing-it and all the accompanying fal-lals. (I trust, by the way, that the British Medical Association has noticed the miraculous effects that yeast tablets appear to have in relieving the pain associated with cancer.) I was distressed to see Miss Barrymore actually simpering at times, and her coy sideways looks were frequent. It seems to me that the Barrymore family would have done very-much better for themselves had they stayed on the stage. Diana, who has made some very bad films indeed, is evidently quite competent on Broadway; John, one of the finest actors America has aver produced, was involved in some very unfortunate film ventures before he drank himself to, death; Lionel—well, if Lionel had stayed on the board we wouldn't have had the Doctor Kildare films, would we? and Ethel, in my opinion, has not increased her stature as an actress with the film under discussion.

Barry Fitzgerald is His Own Lovable Self, and when you've said that, you've said everything. June Duprez acts in a very peculiar fashion, and Jane. Wyatt is good in a role with not a great deal of scope. The best character, whose name I did not catch, was the actor who played Mordinoy.

All in all, this is a very unsatisfactory film.

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