... J| Reviewed, by PHILIP PAGE STAGE matriarchs vary, naturally enough, with the actresses who play them. There was Mrs. Patrick Campbell in a play actually called The Matriarch-- subtle, powerfully tragic, intensely personal. There is Miss Nancy Price matriarching it like anything in Whiteoaks-- a grim and bony centenarian with a rasping tongue. But now we have Miss Lilian Braithwaite in The ...

... DRAMA: Who First Coined the Phrase, I'm No Angel? Keith Win ter's Latest Play Appeals to the Stalls Clever Acting at the Savoy By PRINCESS PAUL TROUBETZKOY I DO not think that it is very clever to quote a line from one play to describe another, but I found one so apposite when, in Keith Winter's Worse Things Happen at Sea Frank Lawton pointedly stated, Old friends usually become old bores! ...

... Robert Loraine Actor and Airman His Wile Reveals the Character of this Versatile Actor who was Ever in the Midst of Adven ture: A Brilliant Individualist, but no Leader Reviewed By VERNON FANE SOME men are born to be biographised; others achieve a biographer, and there are those who have biographies thrust upon them. A curious world will always want to know about those whom it has called great ...

... PLAYS and FILMS Too Much Collaboration but Plenty of Entertain* ment in Spread It Abroad The Prince Edward Theatre Gives a J\[ew Meaning to Dining in Soho By PHILIP PAGE THERE is an uncon scionable use of that blessed word collabora tion in the new revue Spread It Abroad. The dialogue of more than one sketch has, according to the programme, been evolved in collaboration with Diana ...

... An English Family in the Days of the Crimea By Vernon Fane Entertaining Anecdotes of the Stanleys of Alderley Emerge from their Corre spondence Between 1851 and 1865 MISS NANCY MITFORD continues her inspired editing of the letters of the Stanley family with THE STANLEYS OF ALDERLEY (Chapman and Hall. 18s.), a volume which takes their correspondence from 1851 to 1865. As before, the bulk of the ...

... On Stage and Screen This National Theatre Scheme The Gusher, Melodramatic Entertainment for the Nursery By PHILIP PAGE THE National Theatre Committee, in its twenty-nine years of not conspicuously active existence, has at last done something. It has provided a silly season topic by acquiring a giant site in South Kensington, which will be about as much use for the purpose for which it is ...

... A COLOURFUL ACTRESS IN A COLOURLESS ROLE Judy Kelly's Hard Task To Infuse Vitaliiy Into Bridge of Sighs -By PHILIP PAGE DURING the first scene of Bridge of Sighs at the St. Martin's-- a play less rather than more about Catherine of Russia-- I recalled how Bernard Shaw treated that strong-willed and passionate sovereign. (It is, by the way, becoming increasingly difficult to keep Mr. Shaw out ...

... The World OF BOOKS: Reviewed by VERNON FANE MR. RALPH BREWSTER is one of those indomitable travellers who, undeterred by cloudbursts, lack of ready money, collapsing tents, collapsing donkeys and processions of bedbugs, chooses year by year to visit the most lovely and remote places and to write about them for our edification and delight. The drawbacks I have mentioned would be discouraging to ...

... The World of Books Middleton Murry Pushes Frankness to Embarrass ing Limits in his Autobiography-- Further Adventures of the Matriarch in G. B. Stern's Latest Novel Reviewed by VERNON FANE People write autobiographies for a variety of reasons; they publish them for the sufficient reason that they think there are other people who want to read them. There certainly is always a market for ...

... Reviewed by PRINCESS PAUL TROUBEIZKOY Man of Yesterday I Thought Provoking Entertainment at the St. Martin s Owen N ares Excels in Youth at the Helm Bril liant Dancing, Tuneful Numbers, and Spectac ular Effects in Stop Press Those base members of a theatre audience who commit that abominable sin of drift ing in to their chosen performance a quarter of an hour after the curtain has risen, will ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE JENNY JONES (Hippodrome).-- If it were not that Mr. George Black is the last man I should ever suspect of whimsicality, I would feel tempted to suggest that he arranged for the worst show and the best show he has ever produced to open within twenty-four hours, just by way of an odd sort of fun. Let us consider the bad one first and get it over. Jenny Jones has a ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE L-JOW ARE THEY AT HOME? (Apollo).-- I did not see Mr. J. B. Priestley's recent play about soldiers written for the sake of^civilians at home, but if it is as good as its converse, How Are They At Home?, it will do amply well and then some. The author in a programme note explains that it was decided to produce the play here in the ordinary way before the various ENSA ...