Word: sybillants
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Rumor has been unkind to this play for it has said that it is a good play. If you want to enjoy "The Distaff Side" don't go to it with that misapprehension--it's a nice play and Dame Sybil Thorndike must be a very nice woman. It's a reassuring play for it demonstrates with properly repressed vigor that the home is the thing, that women make the home, and therefore women are the thing. It has many nice women in it the grandmother is gruff and self-centered but an fond she is really nice. The middle...
...Play not a Play?" will be discussed by John van Druten on Monday, under the auspices of the Dramatics Club. An English playwright novelist, and poet of note, Mi. van Druten is the author of the comedy "The Distaff Side," which evening of February 4, with Dame Sybil Thorndike in the leading role. He is also the author of the new play "Flowers of the Forest," which will be produced and acted by Katherine Cornell this February, in New York City...
...Distaff Side (by John Van Druten; Dwight Deere Wyman and Auriol Lee, producers). This quiet study of womanly nobility serves chiefly to break the monotony of dirty but dull plays which all but engulfed the Broadway stage last month. In it Sybil Thorndyke, Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, returns for the first time in 24 years...
...Dame Sybil in The Distaff Side is the keystone of an upper middle-class family of women. To her ancient and churlish mother (Mildred Natwick) she shows unremitting forbearance. To her fretful and uncertain sisters and daughter she imparts a philosophy distilled from long and loving communion with her late husband. One by one problems are solved. The daughter (Viola Keats) leaves the man who can further her ambitions for the man she loves. One sister (Estelle Wynwood) foregoes an unseemly dalliance, returns to the old romance that time has almost staled. The other sister (Viola Roache) finds it easier...
What keeps The Distaff Side from slip ping into mawkishness is Sybil Thorndyke who seems to imbue her acting with a extraordinary personal warmth and to make the play a cameo-clear portrait of a fine and gracious woman...