... TU By Horace Horsnell Old Chelsea (Prince's) I OLD times, sentimentally approached, are apt to display ye olde veneer; and there are writers whose quality may be judged by their attitude to the past. This may be patronising, which is bad; snobbish, which is worse, or just plumb whimsical, which but it is late in the day to flog that poor lade, the musical-comedy libretto. Good ness knows ...

... By Horace Horsnell Halfway to Heaven (Princes) I AM not on very easy terms with the super natural. Professors of the black arts would regard me as an outsider. Even amateur fortune-tellers look at me askance, and palm ists snub, when I inquire sympathetically into the craft of the arts they practise. So that although I approached them with friendly curiosity and an open mind, perhaps I am not ...

... By Horace Horsnell ITar and Peace (Phainix) TOLSTOY'S War and Peace is a long story, epic in scope and quality. It has lately suffered a popular English boom. This was provoked by our general interest in Russia and by the fateful parallel between Napoleon's 1812, and the present Nazi campaigns. A radio adaptation of the book was recently broadcast; a film is projected, and a stage play was ...

... By Horace Horsnell Acacia Avenue (Vaudeville) SOMEDAY the happy breeds of Balham, Tooting, and the lands beyond the five- mile radius will rise in revolt, not against their conditions, but against flippant exposure on the stage. The tocsin will be sounded on Shooters Hill, the standard raised on Clapham Common, Wandsworth will embody its militia, Blackheath raise levies, and storm troops ...

... By Horace Horsnell Present Laughter (Haymarket) WHAT future generations will make of our plays and other theatre proceed ings remains to be seen. Still, I venture to forecast that, with this delightfully ridiculous comedy (possibly the wittiest since The Importance of Being Earnest), Mr. Noel Coward will have made a notable advance in the opinion of posterity. He should figure in that select ...

... By Horace Horsnell There Shall Be No Night (Aldtvych) ALFRED LUNT and Lynn Fontanne are such agreeable and accomplished actors that we should welcome almost any play they chose to bring to us. We like them both for what they do and the way they do it. Their acting is so skilful and studied an art that it might be described as inspired methodism. Their technical equipment includes (but is by no ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES Gay and Grim By James Agate NOT always do we feel disposed to visit the cinema: there are days and days. So, after cutting our finger, upsetting the ink-pot on to our priceless Axminster, put ting two important business letters into the wrong envelopes, using a new mouth-wash instead of the accustomed Nufix for what we humorously call our hair, and ending up with ...

... By Horace Horsnell Pink String and Sealing Wax (Duke of York's) CHOOSING a title for a new play must be as tricky as choosing one for a new peer. What does this one suggest to you-- a theme for a surrealist painter, or a conversation piece by the Walrus and the Carpenter? Actually, it has nothing to do with either of those æsthetic extremes. Mr. Roland Pertwee is not that kind of dramatist. He ...

... By Horace Horsnell Magic Carpet (Princes) MAGIC carpets are tricky aircraft. They fly, as you know, on a mixture of dreams and wishes. Transcending both time and space, their range is limited only by the imagination of the pilot. They take off at the word (or wish) of command. Once started, however, they are apt to get out of control, have a tendency to stall, and prefer a crash to a happy ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES A Great Russian Film By James Agate LET it be laid down clearly and distinctly, without any iff-ing and aff-ing, as we used to say up North, that One Day if War, the Russian film, now showing at the Regal is by streets, miles, and any other unit of measure you can think of, the best documen tary ever made. The day chosen to be shot by the hundred and sixty Russian ...

... By Horace Horsnell Arsenic and Old Lace (Strand) THOUGH poised to begin with somewhat perilously between the comic and the macabre, this ruthless comedy comes down so deftly on the side of the wicked burlesque that laughter, which might have been self-conscious or constrained, becomes both spontaneous and full-throated. Its theme is homicidal mania; its two most charming characters are active ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES Two Good Films By James Agate Watch on the Rhine (Warner and Regal, Marble Arch) is in one way poorer than the play but in many ways better. Herman Shumlin, who directs, seems to have had an inspiration amounting to a brain wave. This is to leave the horrors of Nazi misrule where Lillian Hellman left them-- to the imagination. Throughout the entire picture we do not ...