... By Herbert Farjeon r Distant Point (Westminster) THIS rather ingenuous Communist play, written by Alexander Afinogenev (whose death in a Moscow air-raid was announ ced last week) and adapted by Hubert Griffith), has a certain charm which would have been a good deal more charming had the treatment been a good deal less partisan; but the author is so busy making a case for life under the Soviets ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. FOR two years of sea-war, on and off, Camera-man Roy Kellino, of Ealing Studios, has been sail ing with the British Navy, on battleships light and heavy, on trawlers and on mine sweepers and on air craft-carriers, shooting film that will bring the salt of the Senior Service into our cinemas. He has sailed the Arctic, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean. He has turned his ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Other People's Houses Ambassadors THIS highly domestic comedy by Lynne Dexter sets out to provide all the fun of the home front. When the curtain rises, Marie Lohr in the character of Mrs. Sheldon is at the telephone, giving her weekly order and receiving rebuffs from the grocer. The audience rejoices in her reactions every lime she can't get what she wants. Before the first ...

... Rural TLngland and, the VJar TWO well-known writers have decided to put on record a picture of the England of the countryside in wartime, and a valuable record it should prove to be. The Middle West of America and the Dominions would undoubtedly be puzzled by some of the allusions to country customs and manners, but I should like to see these books read there to show how war came to ordinary ...

... Get a Load of This (London Hippodrome) By Herbert Farjeon Mr. GEORGE BLACK, having given us at the Victoria Palace a knock-out show which was pre-coupon system, is now demonstrating at the London Hippodrome what, coupon system or no coupon system, can still be done. That Get a Load of This will be an enormous success is a complete certainty. That it is a triumph of ingenuity, of organisa tion, ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE phrase Town and Country, which once suggested an association of ideas, has come to imply an antithesis. Instead of town and country, it should run town or country, for the two, it seems, do not mix; indeed, the cleavage between them, the growth of 150 years, is deeper, some say, than that between the rich and the poor. No doubt this is an exaggeration, but no one ...

... Books: R eviewed by Noel Thompson I HAVE written elsewhere on this page on how war came to the English countryside. M. Dragomir, a Polish civil servant, now an exile in America, has told in It Started in Poland (Faber and Faber, 8s. 6d.) a vivid personal story of how the blitzkrieg hit Poland. He des cribes those harrowmg days towards the end of August, 1939, the first few days of fighting, ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. IN I, Too, Have Lived in Arcadia, Mrs. Belloc Lowndes tells how her mother, Bessie Parkes, took a house at La Celle St. Cloud, near Paris, with a friend; and how, contrary to many people's wishes and advice, she married the invalid son of her neighbour, Mme. Belloc. This mar riage, which only lasted five years, and the nine summers at St. Cloud which followed it, were, so ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Jupiter Laughs (New) THE action of Dr. Cronin's play (a very workmanlike affair) takes place in a private nerve clinic, the particular locale chosen being the doctor's common-room, which happily spares us the patients. Here we are introduced to Dr. Drewett, an amiable old hand much engrossed in playing patience, and to Dr. Thorogood, an unamiable young one, much engrossed in ...