"ST. HELENA"

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 19, 6 February 1937, Page 14

"ST. HELENA"

On© of the most successful plays produced on Broadway, New York, during the current season is "Bt. Helena," from the pens of R. C. Sherrifl (author of "Journey's End") and Jeanne de Casalis. Maurice Evans plays Napoleon and is said to bring to the role am uncanny physical resemblance to the Emperor. It is a sympathetic, panoramic play about Napoleon's last days. The play's most powerful scene is set in the courtyard of the little house the Englisb have given to Napoleon. (lt is here that he breaks more ties vvith the France that grows dimmer across the Mediterranean. The faithful leave him by departure and death, and the LittJe Corporal himself loses hope and health and grows weary of the petty squabbles that upset bis household. "Goodbye, Gourgaud!'" And, as a 6ad ending to a New Year celebration, General Gourgauld, one of the faithful few who followed Napoleon into exile on the volcanic island, walks out of the conrtyard and out of his Emperor' s life, carrying with him Napoleon's New Year gift. Napoleon sits1 alon© on the steps of "Longwood/3 his last "palace". The despised little island of St. Helena that was his last home proves to be more volcanic, in more ways than one, than even the English h'ad hoped for. Just how good an impression the play has mad© on New York critics may be jiidjfed from this commeht of one of them:- "It holde the kind of craftsmanship which restores one's faith in what so. often becomes the slipshod and overblown art. Rob.ei't Sherriff and Jeanne de Casalis, .turning up their noses at all the. obvioua and easy colour of the Bonaparte legend — deadened princesses, 'thundering battle-lines and' triumphal pageants— have here worked entirely in chiaroscuro. i. . ; ' . "They have turned out a distinguished play and a moving-human document. Ako, by making no cheap theatrio concessions, they have achieved ttrikingi theatric effect .1 don't know when I have seen as quietly telling a scene in the theatre as the one in . which a bust of the little King of Rome arrives at Longwood House. Unless it is the one in which the conqueror, already iar gone in his fatal tdisease, takes pot shots at the chickens which h'ave: been scratching ' up the newly-planted* seeds in his 'garden." Aiid Robert Benchley, another noted critit — you have seen him in. short.. subjects on the screen, by the' way — pays his colloquial tribute in this fashion: "It made me soi'ry for Napoleon, and, although Napoleon does not know this, that is quite an achievement."