... CRITICISMS IN CAMEO. THE STAGE. By J. T. GRE1N. I WAS nine years old when I saw EAST LYNNE for the first time, in Amsterdam; people around me were crying, and I shed synchronic tears. Much later-- a budding critic in London-- I saw it again, and if the tears were not as copious, the sobs and sighs dimmed the other side of the stalls, especially when the boy died in tuberculosis and Lady ...

... . By IVOR BROWN. LIFE under the roofs of Paris is generally expected to be full of laughing poverty and love which sheds a tear. In SIXTH FLOOR, adapted by Mr. Rodney Ackland from the French, produced by Mr. Gilbert Miller for a few nights at the St. James's Theatre, we see those supposedly romantic roofs of Montmartre and observe the life which goes on under the tiles, and even, ...

... . By IVOR BROWN. THE snake in the grass is a very old friend. Indeed, he plays the villain in the oldest story of the world. The human serpent turns up in a curious form in THE IN TRUDER, at Wyndham's Theatre. This piece by M. Mauriac, translated by Basil Bartlett, was originally produced (and much liked) at the Gate Theatre under the title of Asmodée. Asr .odeus, as you certainly do not ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. NOVELS in which the narrative is sufficiently organised to be called a plot are more open to charges of improbability than those written on the slice-of-life system. If life is just one damned thing after another, we cannot challenge the logic of events; they may seem unlikely or unnatural in themselves, but not in virtue of their relationship to each other. But a fixed ...

... . THERE is a certain activity in the try out theatres on London's periphery, and for the zealous enthusiast seeking the interest of the unusual and the uncommon, there are the pioneer efforts of The Barn Theatre, at Shere, which has already a good record of successful seasons, and the Tewkesbury players; but in the magic circle of which Shaftesbury Avenue is the centre there are no London ...

... A MUSIC ARTICLE BY EDWIN EVANS. ONE of my re cent experi ences was that of presiding, in a television pro gramme, over the musical equivalent of the popular spell ing bee. The teams were equally divided between amateurs and professionals, and between the sexes. Some of the questions put to them were obviously intended to be a source of innocent merriment. Of the others, some were the musical ...

... Criticisms in Cameo. By J. T. Grein. i. THE SILENT WITNESS, AT THE COMEDY. JOLLY GOOD! said that great lawyer, Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, in the lobby, and then he praised the substantial accuracy of the great trial-scene in which the father was pro secuted for the sin of his son-- the murder of his mistress. It was a scene as poignant as The Trial of Mary Dugan, and it was led up to as ...

... The Literary Lounger. By L. P. Hartley. Ninepenny Novels. Sir Ernest Benn has done a good turn both to the public and to the art of fiction with his new series of ninepenny novels. They are pleasant to the eye, light in the hand, and of a size (and a price!) convenient for the pocket. Moreover, they are short, only half the length of an ordinary novel. Whether this is to be accounted a virtue ...

... . By MICHAEL ORME. AN addition to London's Continental cinemas, the Berkeley (late the Lansdowne News Theatre), has opened with an adapta tion of Gerhardt Hauptmann's play Vor Sonnenuntergang. Significantly re-christened DER HERRSCHER, this German prize film unfolds the story of a struggle for supremacy between a wealthy widower, who finds renewed happiness with his young secretary, and ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. STAR MAKER is the most ambitious novel, if novel it can be called, that I ever read. Not only does Mr. Olaf Stapledon seek to justify, or, at any rate, to explain, the ways of God to man in a general way; he goes much further. He sends his soul into the infinite (only the universe is no longer regarded as infinite) to learn its secrets at first hand. While his body lies ...

... 4t the Sign of the Cinema. By MICHAEL ORME. TO acclaim Song of the Alps (Marble Arch Pavilion) as greater than The White Hell of Pitz Palu-- as has been done-- is, to my mind, to stultify appreciation from the outset. Except for the fact that both films are set amidst the pictorial grandeur and immensity of the Alps and are without dialogue, they are in no wise comparable. In The White ...

... Criticisms in Cameo. By J. T. Grein. i. GALSWORTHY'S WINDOWS, AT THE DUCHESS. I CANNOT restrain one general remark on this otherwise very efficient production of the People's National Theatre, for to withhold it would be tacitly to encourage a growing, nefarious habit. From where I sat, in the ninth row of the stalls, I could not hear more than half of what was said on the stage, so terrible ...