Clarence; it holds on while a far wittier, far more intelligent piece like Too Many Husbands comes badly off, because Clarence is native and unpretentious and simply amusing. The moments when the humour strikes too near-home are few, but the play remains real, while an equally agreeable farce, My Lady Friends, is always superficially clever.
The writers of plays are still hesitant about humour; Wedding Bells, The GoLd Diggers, and the whole upholstered repertoire of Mr. Al Woods testify to the superior stage qualities of rough wit and incessant action, leaving Potash and Clarence virtually alone in the projection of human character. But I would gratefully record that going to the theatre has been very easy this year.
The theatre is not a social institution; it is only adventitiously a part of the communal life. It is intensely a personal thing at which we are either interested or bored, moved to laughter and to tears, or not. In a world where such specious examples as The Jest, Déclassée, and Aphrodite are considered artistic successes, there can be little room for discussing the art of the theatre. In a season where social criticism from the stage is limited to woolly little plays about the nationalization of women, the community function of the theatre can hardly be said to exist.
The fact sticks, magnificently, that the proportion of plays which have interested and charmed and moved the intelligent is high, and if the theatre is decadent not a few of us will cheerfully stand by it in its decay. It would be easier for us if the acting were a bit better; perhaps before the month is out one superlative piece of work will occur to give point to a discussion of the rest.
