Quiet but Happy

In its fifth winter of war, the London stage is still up to scratch, if to nothing much livelier. Thirty-seven theaters are open, offering everything from ballet to burlesque. Business generally started out bravely in 1943, but crawled into bed toward the end because of the flu epidemic. Now it malingers because of people's concern for the second front. Nothing new and exciting this season bears a made-in-Britain label, but London has done pretty well for itself with goods from overseas and old finery out of trunks.

Imports. Smash hit at the moment--and an exception to London's craving for escape--is Robert E. Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night, with the Lunts in their Broadway roles and the play's setting changed from Finland to Greece. Many Londoners, finding its tragic story too close to their own experiences, leave halfway through the play. The production had a troubled road tryout. Both Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne opened in Oxford with the flu ("It was wonderful," said Fontanne, "but like swimming under water"), eventually gave flu to the entire company. At the opening night in Glasgow there were nothing but understudies.

Other U.S. hits include Arsenic and Old Lace, Junior Miss, My Sister Eileen, Panama Hattie. Producer Firth Shephard has such a yen for putting on U.S. plays that a current revue gag runs: "What's Firth Shephard looking so unhappy about ?"--"Oh, someone's given him an English play to read."

Antiques. Best-liked British plays are both revivals: Congreve's Restoration romp, Love for Love, starring John Gielgud; and a superbly costumed An Ideal Husband by the epigrampa of them all, Oscar Wilde. Of An Ideal Husband (produced by Cinemactor Robert Donat), Critic Charles Edward Montague once said: "It proves how indolently a man of comic genius may write a comedy and yet not fail. . . . The tangle of the plot is not really disentangled at all; it is merely exorcised; miracles happen whenever Wilde cannot undo one of his knots." London also has a good Peter Pan and an even better Alice in Wonderland, with decor modeled on the famed Tenniel illustrations, and statuesque Dame Sybil Thorndike as the White Queen. Half of London is agog to see Sybil "on wires."

Thriving, too, is that great standby, the pantomime--ostensibly for youngsters but, like the American circus, something that most parents can't wait to take the children to. Embroidering a fairy tale or nursery rhyme with slapstick and music, the pantomime is rich in traditions. The hero is always played by a girl, the ugly old dame by a man; and there is usually a stuffed cat or dog. Biggest pantomime hit is Humpty Dumpty, breaking all records at the Coliseum to the tune of -L-9,000 a week. Its animal is a stuffed terrier, that, like the rubber plant in Hellzapoppin, grows bigger each time it puts in an appearance. Its topical song--which the audience joins in on--runs: "When shall I see a banana again, tell me, mother, do."

Biggest thing on the London horizon is a play (Staff Dance) by Actor Robert Morley (Oscar Wilde) in which Beatrice Lillie will play her first straight role.

* In the U.S. version of There Shall Be No Night.

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