... By Herbert Farjeon The Cherry Orchard (New) IT does not need an alliance with Russia to justify a production of The Cherry Orchard. All critics are now agreed that this play reaches the very roots of tenderness, touches the very tips of beauty, is one of the dramatic masterpieces of all time. It was not always so. When The Cherry Orchard was first presented in this country in 1911, many ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Fun and Games (Prince s) IT would be difficult to decide which of the items in this show come under the classifi cation of Fun as distinct from Games, and which under the classification of Games as distinct from Fun. Some of them, indeed, appear to be neither. Take, for example, those in which Miss Linda Gray, an artist of outstanding quality, is involved. These are ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE historical setting to The Captain from Con necticut is the little- known war of 1812-1814 be tween England and America, the war in which we burned the Capitol at Washington. From a political and a military point of view it was over shadowed by the Napoleonic War, of which it was an offshoot. The blockade was as irritating to neutral countries then as now and the ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Room V (Garrick) THE author ol this ingenuous play, under stood to be an officer in the army, assumes the curious nom-de-plume of Peter Wendy and so .sets one on the alert for traces of the influence of Barrie. These traces are not hard to find. Before the first act has been long in progress, we realise that the action is taking place in an up-to-date version of Our Home ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. KISS THE BOYS GOOD-BYE (Plaza) is the sort of film about which your friends, when asked if they enjoyed the piece, will probably pause for a second and then say, with some surprise, Well, actually, I did. The surprise is due to the fact that Kiss the Boys Good-bye is a pretty slim piece of entertainment, when you come to think about it. The enjoyment is due to the fact ...

... Village Tales, Mediums and oport There's Something About a Village Margaret Lane's Spiritualist Rake's Progress A Full-blooded Historical Novel of Adventure Prize-Fighting and Nostalgia -By Vernon Fane MR. ANTHONY ARM STRONG, known to readers of Punch as A.A., has written a book which is amus ingly illustrated by Mr. Bertram Prance, whose initials will be found in the corner of so many of Mr ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Are Dramatic Critics Unkind I EVERY now and then dramatic critics who sit in judgment on the work of others, pronouncing it to be good, bad or in different according to their taste, find that they have themselves become the subject of criticism, and that the goodness, badness or indifference of their own work is being called into question. More often, however, when they are ...

... Personal Experiences Vie with Fiction Inside a British Internment Camp; Sir Hugh Walpole's Last 7 \[ovel The Bedside Esquire; Journals of an Old Sea 'Dog -By Vernon Fane THE problem of the friendly enemy alien has undoubtedly been a difficult one. Perhaps in the first nine months of the war we were inclined to be a little too easy-going about it all. Then, following the fall of France, ...

... A Journey through Oppressed Europe --By Vernon Fane A Brilliant Description of a Woman's Wartime ^Odyssey Virginia in the Days of Slaves Peter Cheyney s Tough Egg Snakes and Tfazis in Dutch Guiana IN April 1940 Miss Polly Pea body landed at Bergen with an American field hospital on its way to Finland. Neither she nor the unit succeeded in getting there, for, within a day or two, German ...

... -Bv Vernon Fane Daphne du M aurier's Charming Pirate Love, Luxury and Pre-war Europe; Dr. Rauschning's Conservative Revolution THERE may be an old farm building near a backwater of the Helford River on the site of what was a proud house in Restoration days. Behind the walls of that house a beautiful lady once watched and listened, her hands playing a little nameless melody upon the sill. The ...

... . Bv L. P. HARTLEY. WALK INTO MY PAR LOUR is the story-- the life-story almost-- of Emma Shardiloe, medium and clairvoyante. It opens in 1891 with an evening party that Emma's mother, a retired actress, was giving at her house on Brixton Hill; it ends in 1939 at a flat in Pimlico in circumstances much less afflu ent and in a spirit far less gay. On the whole, the graph of Emma's life traces ...

... : Reviewed by Noel Thompson THIS month out of twelve books which I have picked for review, all except two are biographies, dramatised lives of real characters, or based on actual facts, while the two exceptions are crime books with an American background. And only one has anything to do with the war. Does that mean that times are too real for our fiction writers? It is too much, I fear, to ...