Among the Great

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 554, 5 January 1929, Page 20

Among the Great

Beatrice Lillie’s Success in New York LONDONERS HAILED WITH DELIGHT Beatrice Billie (Lady Peel), the London star, has created a sensation in New York, where she is appearing in the Noel Coicard revue, ‘‘This Year of Grace." Not to mince matters any further, Beatrice Lillie is a great comedian, wrote the dramatic critic of the New York “Times.” Ever since her first, appearance here in “Chariot’s Revue,” Miss Lillie has been held in high public esteem. Even the wretched, beflustered musical comedies in which she has lately appeared have not tarnished the brilliance of her reputation; and now she is sparkling with

superb wit and intelligence in “This Year of Grace.” We have all saluted her hysterically. In comparing her, with the master of comedy, Charlie Chaplin, we have come down as handsomely as we can, for, like him, she is no passing comedian, but a historical event. In order that there may be no possible probable shadow of doubt, let it be soberly recorded that she is a great comedian.

Only the great ones can command so much mute eloquence in pantomime. All Miss Lillie’s comedy, i whether it be subtle or broad, springs ! from an alert intelligence which plays : around ideas as flames lick around a fresh log. No doubt some of it comes through the medium of blousey costumes, over-elaborate hats that twist the line of her figure into a laugh. But most of it she conveys through gesture and facial expressions that respond instantly to every coruscating quirk in her mind. Her first appearance in “This Year of Grace” is a prolonged pantomime, entitled “The Bus Rush,” in which Miss Lillie makes another ercursion into that up-side-down realm of bourgeois dignity, where she has always been matchless. Costumed with the tawdry elegance of bad taste, encumbered with balloons and packages, she endeavours to preserve her sense of personal importance in the confusion of repeated sallies toward passing buses. If she were humble this would he a forlorn spectable. But since she is vain and desperately complacent, afflicted with delusions of haughty grandeur, she is painfully ridiculous as she struggles for her rights in a vaguely perplexed mob, and as she asserts, ineffectually, her petty individuality. When she goes further and attempts to assert her superiority by smiling coyly at an alarmed little boy and patronisingly patting him on the head she touches the heights of incongruity. It is a masterly comic sketch, like a George Belcher drawing. Yet all this fluid, street-corner drama Miss Lillie enacts with nothing more elaborate than a jumpy walk and a varying look of primness, scorn or indignation on her face. Those who radiate intelligence and humour need not encumber themselves with slapstick or with words.

Not that Miss Lillie is too fastidious to romp around in broad buffoonery. As Daisy Kipshaw, the hoitytoity Channel swimmer, she verges on low comedy in "This Year of Grace,” strikes grotesquely affected poses for the photographers, addresses the vulgar mob in an insultingly friendly style, signs her autograph with a condescending flourish, and for one delirious moment she wrestles savagely with the frightened lad who -will not give her his album, signs it and flings it angrily over her head. When she is a lady she insists upon observing every rule of conduct. She will not tolerate exiguous lapses from the accepted form. Despite the comic inadequacy of her pretensions to greatness, she expects every one to submit to her aura at once.