THE LONDON STAGE IN WAR TIME

Patriotic Plays Please the Perturbed Populace

Campbell Lee

THE soldier and the stage are fast allies in the great war. Very few of the London plays that are heroically holding on in spite of phantom salaries, and sometimes phantom houses, are succeeding in remaining neutral. "Tommy Atkins," "The Second in Command,"

"The Daughter of the Regiment," and "The Chocolate Soldier," are all at the front again with other old warriors under forty-five; the historical drama has come into its own with a rush. Benefits abound; the voice of the patriotic reciter is heard in the land-of-the-music-hall; and what with Belgian bands playing the Brabanconne. . . "Le Roi, la loi, la liberte! . . . and bugle and pipe, indoors and out, bursting into God save the King and the Marseillaise on all occasions, everybody spends most of his time on his feet.

The sudden shift in public thought, brought about by the war, was responsible for a kaleidoscopic change in many a bill. Sir Herbert Tree, for one, was practically waiting in the wings to go on in David Copperfield, when hostilities made it expedient to revive Louis N. Parker's "Drake." "Drake" is having a popular success; three actresses, Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Grace Darby, and Evelyn Millard, have already been used up in the red-haired role of Queen-Elizabeth, and the queue at His Majesty's, Theatre is as long as that at the recruiting offices. Another Parker play to leap into the breach is "Bluff King Hal" at the Garrick, with Arthur Bourchier as Henry the Eighth, swanker and bon enfant, and Violet Vanbrugh as an arch and wily Katharine Parr. The play is finely staged by a new designer, Mr. Hugo Rumbald. Mr. Rumbald's pictures of Greenwich, Hampton Court and Westminster are archeological and most splendid. They succeed in making of "Bluff King Hal" a little Cook's tour from the stalls.

The tons of dramatic material thrown at the playmakers' feet by the mighty epoc now in progress promise to be interestingly utilized in time. But for once, the play is not the thing. Like everybody else, the dramatist, if he isn't serving with the colours, is busy working for the National Service League, the Belgium Relief Corps, the Officers' Families' Fund or some other war movement. . . . Quite too busy to bother about Problems, Triangles, The Cheeild, or Women with or without Pasts.

AMONG the plays that seek to cheer, tout simplement the first premiere of the autumn, is "My Aunt!" at the Vaudeville. "My Aunt!" is the most exhilarating thing imaginable for that khaki-coloured feeling. Paul Gavault, the French lawyer-playwright, wrote the farce which, as Ma Tante d'Honfleur, ran for weeks at the Variétés in Paris. The aunt comes from Exeter in the English version, but she is not at all the sort of person who usually lives in a cathedral town. She overlooks a number of circumstances in her nephew's mode of life that most Early Perpendicular relatives would consider scandalous. Complications start when she arrives, unannounced, at midnight at her nephew's flat, and prepares to spend the night on the Chippendale settee in the dear boy's dressing room. The Chippendale is booked several times during the evening by different desperate friends of the nephew. Misunderstandings thicken later at a country house where at last the curtain rings down with everybody restored to his own name and his own fiancee, and the audience so weak from laughter that it is just able to drag itself to its favorite night club and that's all.

Miss Lottie Venne plays the role of the tolerant rich aunt, and Mlle. Yvonne Garricke, whom one remembers charmingly in Marcel Provost's Anges Gardiens, makes her debut in English as the little French milliner with a strangle-claim on a handsome and helpless young man who tries to marry and live conventionally ever after. "My Aunt!" isn't the most original play ever written but its nonsense in these grim, gray days is as refreshing as white heather to a homesick Highlander.

MISS Marie Tempest, charmingly clad in old rose, is singing old songs in the old way at the Empire. She has revived The Sentimental Gold Fish from "The Geisha," among others . .. the fish with the glit-glit-glitter whose fate was so bit-bit-bitter, and such is the abiding art of this lady that the audience listens with tears in its eyes and thinks of the casualty lists and the horrors of dum-dum-warfare. French songs too; "Si j'étais Jardinier" and " Un peu d'amour" which she sings almost sans accent which is, to the homesick Belgians and French present, a thing unutterably affecting.

But Miss Tempest's song of songs is a patriotic one—which brings us back to the beginning! It is called "Who's for the Flag?" and she sings it with two brave knights in khaki on either side of her supporting the Union Jack. Electric current begins to travel all over the house, and there is a general stampede for the nearest recruiting office. Even the women and the little flappers present burn to enlist; but they can only sit still and knit, while the orchestra swings the refrain again and again. Miss Tempest is soon to leave for a long tour in the States. Oh, just an Au r'voir one . . . not a farewell!

WITH few first nights to record the season has, however, one bright white stone: Miss Ethel Levey's entrance in the "Legitimate." Miss Levey is preparing to play the "Taming of the Shrew," "Lady Macbeth" and other efforts by the same author. She makes a first move in their serious direction in a new play, "Outcast," by Mr. Hubert Henry Davies. Miss Levey plays the part of a siren of the streets named Miriam . . . plays it with such sympathy and fire that Londoners are using up half-crown gloves nightly in their enthusiasm. It was only necessary for the idol of the Hippodrome to walk across the road to Wyndham's Theatre to step from ragtime land into the world of Dumas, Fils. But Honey, she will never go back. She may fling a look over her shoulders at the gay old boards and taunt them with the familiar warning—"Some of these days youah gwine to miss me." But she has found' her future in this bitter little drama. . . .

It is a seething pot-full of unrequited love, unhappy marriage, drink, despair, hope, black moods, purple moods, camaraderie, and other dramatic ingredients. Mr. Gerald du Maurier plays the r61e of the nervous wreck of a hero with great' art, and Miss Levey's impersonation of the woman, who, in spite of all, has kept fineness and a sense of humor alive in her soul, is altogether admirable.

The first three acts of "Outcast," move with delightful simplicity and conviction. The* fourth, alas, is most sad. Why does not Mr. Davies let somebody else . . . George Cohan for example . . . write the last act of his otherwise capital plays? But as it is, the author of "Cousin Kate," "Cynthia" and others has scored his greatest success in this last addition to his gallery of ladies.

It is understood that Mr. Davies wrote " Outcast" with special reference to Miss Levey's vivid personality. It is not the least charm of the piece that the actress is quite unable to divest herself of this personality for a single solitary moment; which leads one to wonder whether, when Miss Levey plays Lady Macbeth people will not be tempted to say "Hullo Miriam!"