... FICTION IN MANY FORMS A New Sinclair Lewis Novel Among Others in a Mixed Bag -By Vernon Fane FOR the past few years Mr. Sinclair Lewis has been giving evidence of a growing interest in the theatre. He has written for it, he has studied it, he has attended it, he has even, on a number of occasions, acted in one. It was obviously inevitable that a novelist of his gifts-- and he remains one of ...

... The Theatre By Herbert Farjeon A House in the. Square (St. Martin's) THIS completely West End play by Diana Morgan begins where Mile- stones left off, takes us from 1910 to the present day, establishes periods, provides vehicles, starves for a story, and then, at the eleventh hour, dies of forcible feeding. The first act shows Lilian Braithwaite as old Lady Mount- stephan of Mountstephan House ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE EARL OF CHICAGO (Leicester Square) is a picture in a hundred. It gives me a special kind of pleasure to be able to say so, because I know what the film means to its star, Robert Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery, who has played so many light-comedy roles in his career that props just naturally follow him on to the set with a cocktail-shaker, has had two special parts that he ...

... THEATRES OF WARTIME LONDON. By THEODORA BENSON and BETTY ASKWITH, Authors of Foreigners or the World in a Nutshell. No. 2. FUNNY SIDE UP, AT HIS MAJESTY'S THEATRE. I'VE got tickets for 'Funny Side Up,' announced Ber nard, beaming. Laura's face fell. Not that she didn't want to see Funny Side Up, of which on all sides she heard excellent ac counts, but she realised that she never would get ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IF FOR FREE DOM (Gaumont) didn't deal with events that stir us pretty deeply at the moment, I wouldn't put it at the top of this column. It is not, I regret to say, a very good picture. As a documentary mani festo of Britain at war, it is inferior to The Lion Has Wings and The First Days. As a fictional story, presenting Will Fyffe as an enterprising news-reel editor, it ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. TECHNICOLOR'S film version of the Maxwell Andersen play, Eliza beth the Queen, in which Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne ap peared on the American stage, was renamed THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZA BETH AND ESSEX (Warners) for the cinema, I understand, in deference to Errol Flynn, who plays Elizabeth's Essex and didn't quite feel that the original title covered both sides of ...

... By V. S. Pritchett THE trouble about most thrillers is that, like boys' books, they are always crudely patriotic and ortho dox when they deal with international politics. Other people's politics are always being confounded and their knavish tricks frustrated with a self-righteousness which is very boring for anyone above Boy Scout age. It is also very old-fashioned. For patriotism has branched ...

... BIOGRAPHY of a POLITICAL GENIUS -By Vernon Fane Richelieu's Effect on European Nationalism LIVING as we do in days when history is being made, the lessons of history may be said to be that much sharper, and to have just that extra edge of interest. Yet it was one of Disraeli's wiser remarks, addressed to the occasional student, that he should read no history, nothing but biography, for that is ...

... The Theatre By Herbert Farjeon Three Iievues REVUE after revue after revue. Of which this week three. First, Moonshine, Archie de Bear's in offensive pocket (let us hope not out-of- pocket) offering at the Vaudeville. Don't Sing a Song About the War, a good num ber, invites us to forget there's a war on. But so mild is the entertainment that sometimes we almost forget there's a show on. ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. SONS AND FATHERS, is a novel dealing with the last days of Tsarism and the beginnings of the Bolshevik Revolution. Mr. Maurice Hindus has chosen a title which deliberately chal lenges comparison with Turgenev's masterpiece. His story does not sustain the compari son, and it seems to me that the spirit of the men who made the Revolution is better ex pressed by Bazarov, in ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. MOST Scandinavian novels are problem novels, for the Scandinavians of to-day, though not perhaps more religious than ourselves, seem to have tenderer con sciences; consciences not only tender, but slightly morbid, infected with the queasiness of Hamlet's moral outlook. Such novels, of course, still abound in English fiction, but not only have they shifted their ground, ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. UNLESS you feel, as some people do, that the whole busi ness of Rasputin and the cakes is a bit old-fashioned now, that enough is enough, I think you will enjoy ''LA TRAGÉDIE IM- PÉRIALE, at the Embassy, in Totten ham Court Road. But perhaps ''enjoy'' is hardly the word to use. Relish, admire, be moved by, let us say. This is the seventh screen version of the Rasputin ...