NIGHT WITH MADMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 352, 12 May 1928, Page 22

NIGHT WITH MADMAN

STARTLING NEW YORK PLAY TAKEN FROM WALPOLE’S NOVEL Another play that has lately appeared in New York with success is “A Man With Red Hair,” written bv Benn Levy on a basis or Hugh Walpole’s novel. It is primarily a study of a madman, the form of whose madness is a lust for the infliction of pain. It is not, in the theatre, a pleasant subject. The madman traps two men and a girl in his house, and the play is the history of their mental and physical suffering, of the torturer’s insane joy, and of his death at the hands of one of the men, whom the girl contrives to release from his bonds. If it were performed simply as sensational melodrama it would not be so good a play, but it would certainly be easier to endure. As it is, Charles Laughton plays the part of the madman with so much subtlety and imagination that he is alive, and you believe in him. You are compelled, then, to spend an evening in the company of a sadistic lunatic, and if you possess either nerves of iron or no imagination at all you may perhaps enjoy the experience, says a New York critic.