Word: seconds
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...second short opus. "Alien Corn" would like to be a bit of tragedy. A young man, frustrated in his sole ambition of becoming a concert pianist, takes his life. Here one of Mr. Maugham's vices creeps in. Lack of depth of emotion allows this piece to deteriorate to the level of a tabloid suicide at the end, though the whole thing is done with rich piano accompaniment, to be sure...
Maurice Evans and Edna Best change their peace from a mismatched couple filled with hate for each other, in the first one-act play of Terrance Rattigan's "Double Bill," to a madcap theatrical team in the second...
...throughout his career, to maintain the delicate balance between discipline and affability--taking refuge in a severity which was lightened only by dry puns. The climax occurs when a member of his alienated Greek class presents him, on his retirement, with a copy of Browning version of the "Agamemnon"--second hand--inscribed with a tender quote from Aeschulus. The master breaks into tears and later reveals his unrequitted attempts at winning the affection of his classes and his sexually unsatisfied wife...
Happily, Mr. Evans' operatic tendencies were not in evidence (except in the second play where they were quite in order), and he performed subtlely and sensitively, with his usual technical excellence. His wife, an equally complex but less developed character, was portrayed with understanding by Edna Best. A competent cast supported the stars in both plays...
...title of the second offering, a farce called "Harlequenade," seems to derive from the plays done by the Commedia del Arts in 13-15th century Italy. The actors then had no scripts, but improvised from a stock situation. An analogy would hold between one of these situations and the framework of a rehearsal of "Romeo and Juliet," in which Mr. Evans and Miss Best, as a famous and fabulous theatrical couple, play the title parts between miscellaneous interruptions in the course of the rehearsal. The play parodies the ingrown frame of mind often found in the theater where...