“THE CRADLE SNATCHERS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 200, 12 November 1927, Page 15

“THE CRADLE SNATCHERS”

BRIGHT AMERICAN PLAY “The Cradle Snatchers,” the entertaining American farce, which is at present running at His Majesty’s, is reported to have shocked the critics in MelboLirne, which has more than a leavening of the “unco guid” in its midst. One supposes that if the imagination is used freely enough, it is possible to be shocked at any tiling. There is ample play for the imagination in “The Cradle Snatchers.” In fact, for the greater part, the audience is left to work out many things for itself. Even the final curtain leaves one wondering to what lengths the neglected wives are prepared to go with three young collegians, who have been pressed into service as “decoys” to bring erring husbands back to the path of rectitude. The play is bright, breezy and clever. The cast is an admirable one, and a whole host of embarrassing situations are so cleverly interwoven with rippling eddies and back-currents of spontaneous humour that even the most con-

firmed Puritan would find it hard to keep a straight face. "The Cradle Snatchers” is hung on a rather loose framework, and it is the genius of Miss Olive Sloane which enables it to run merrily through three amusing acts to a somewhat abrupt climax. In the garden scene (which wasn’t seen, by the way). Miss Sloane was a riot, and her return with her Spanish sheik (born in Brooklyn. New York), reduced the audience to fits of laughter. Miss Bertha Belmore, as Ethel Drake, ran Miss Sloane very close for the individual honours of the even*“The Cradle Snatchers” has been described as "vulgar.” It is too clever to be that, and it at least has an understrata of truth about it, which is not entirely overshadowed by the numerous risky and entertaining situations in which the principals find themselves