FINE ACTING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 631, 6 April 1929, Page 24

FINE ACTING

Best Performances in London Theatres GLADYS COOPER’S SUCCESS The return of Marie Tempest to the West End stage and Gladys Cooper’s production of “The Sacred Flame,” have added brilliantly to the rather exceptional amount of fine acting in London just now, writes William Pollock in the “Daily Mail.” Miss Tempest goes with superb smooth comedy through “Her Shop,” owing far more to herself at closing time than to the authors: but Somerset Maugham’s melodrama—it follows “The Lady with a Lamp” and “Journey’s End” as the third fine English play already staged this season—makes the opportunities for acting. “The Sacred Flame” ran only a fortnight or so in New York —perhaps because the film and “mammy” songs have so glorified mothers in American minds that a murdering mother killed its chances. But what a play it is, as done at the Playhouse, and what acting there is in it from Miss Cooper (one of the best performances in her career, to my mind), Clare Eames, Mary Jerrold and Richard Bird. If I were asked to say what are the best fifteen performances on the West End stage at the moment I would pick the following: Marie Tempest, in “Her Shop.” Gladys Cooper, Clare Eames, Mary Jerrold, Richard Bird, in “The Sacred Flame.” Edith Evans, Gwen Ffrangcon Davies in “The Lady with a Lamp.” Mary Newcomb, in “Jealousy.” Yvonne Arnaud, Leslie Faber, Ronald Squire, in “By Candle Light.” Ernest Milton, in “The Mock Emperor.” Alice Delysia, in “Her Past.” Colin Clive, in “Journey’s End.” Fred Terry, in “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” Purposely I am leaving out of reckoning musical plays and plays that have been running some considerable time. Taking such pieces into account, the list could be easily doubled with the addition of such names as Tom Walls, Evelyn Laye, Paul Robeson, Jack Buchanan, Hugh Wakefield and Marion Lome, Leslie Henson. Sidney Howard, Binnie Hale and Bobby Howes. And, even then, there are others. The London stage is in a pretty good way just now.