"Bluff King Hal."
The arrangements for the production of Mr. Louis Parker's pageant-comedy had of course been made long before war was contemplated. The completion of Mr. Bourchier's beard in itself points to a comparatively remote date for the play's inception. Certainly there is nothing very apposite in its theme at the present juncture; for Harry of England, suffering from the gout, blustering into a sixth marriage, and haunted by the ghosts of four dead wives and the wraith of the sole survivor, is not a figure precisely calculated to inspire patriotic fervour. Still, the circumstances of the play are sufficiently national, and it should serve well enough as a permissible distraction for non-combatants.
You need not be terrified by the complexity of the cast, which consists of twenty prominent characters, twenty-four in smaller type, four ghosts and a wraith, and a sprinkling of nameless "halberdiers, huntsmen, minstrels, servitors, etc." (The soldier-supers—a type not to be confused with the super-soldier—were a very scratch lot; and I must hope that this defect was due to the enlistment of the more martial spirits in the profession.) The history of the period is made very easy for all intelligences, and the relations of Katherine Parr with her lover, Sir Thomas Seymour, furnish a clear thread of human interest.
It was pleasant to make the acquaintance of two future Queens—Mary and Elizabeth—at the less familiar stages of girlhood. Mary, very nicely played by Miss Mina Leonesi, showed no sign of her subsequent taste for blood; but Miss Kathleen Jones, in the part of the pedantic little Princess Elizabeth, gave us some very happy premonitions of the domineering qualities of the Virgin Queen. The tiny Prince Edward, too, who was prepared to compose an epithalamium for his royal parent's final wedlock, already gave promise of a scholarly career. Apart, however, from the charm of Miss Violet Vanbrugh as Katharine Parr, and the gentle dignity of Miss Alice Lonnon as Anne Askew, there was little distinction shown by the others, though the Lord Chancellor Wriothesley of Mr. Humphreys, and Mr. Burton's Bishop Gardiner, conducted their villainies with a proper restraint.
The honours of the evening obviously went to Mr. Hugo Rumbold, who devised the admirable scenery and costumes, and to Mr. Bourchier in the title-róle. By nature and constitution he is clearly made for this part of all others. Occasionally, in asides, his voice was the voice of Mr. Bourchier, but for the rest he identified himself with the undefeatable Hal. I hope he may be persuaded to retain the monarch's beard as a permanent feature; for, as a finished product, it suits him well in private life; and, if he is to make a practice of playing the part of Henry VIII., whether to the words of Shakspeare or Mr. Parker, I would not, for his own sake and that of his many friends, have him renew the horrific processes of its growth.
"The Impossible Woman."
The joy of Tante (from which novel Mr. Haddon Chambers has adapted this play) was that many chapters went by before the reader realised that Madame Okraska was indeed an impossible woman. One began by liking her; went on to criticise; decided that she wasn't so nice as the author intended her to be; and then discovered suddenly that she wasn't intended to be a sympathetic character at all, and that, in fact, our changing attitude towards her had been just the changing attitude which would have been ours in real life. That was Miss Anne Douglas Sedgwick's art. She took her time. Mr. Chambers on the stage has not the time to take.
And so "Tante" is shown to us at once as a histrionic vampire, feeding on the admiration and love of others. Gregory Jardine, in love with her ward, Karen, had already seen through her; we have seen through her; the question is, when will Karen see through her. Forget about the book and you have the foundation of a good play here, on which Mr. Chambers has built skilfully. I gather from the fact that he took alone the call for "Author" that he would wish us to forget about the book. I cannot quite do that, but I can say with confidence that whoever has not read Tante will enjoy The Impossible Woman fully, and that the others will at least find it interesting.
Miss Lillah McCarthy was a superb Okraska. Since she had to reveal herself plainly to the audience, the temptation to overplay the part must have been great, but she resisted it nobly. Mr. Godfrey Tearle, still a little apt to smile at the wrong moment, was a thoroughly efficient Gregory; but Miss Hilda Bayley did not give me a very clear idea of Mr. Chambers' Karen, and was certainly not Miss Sedgwick's. Miss May Whitty and Mr. Henry Edwards, in the small but important parts of Mrs. Talcot and Franz Lippheim, were of very great assistance to the play.