Amazing Play

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 857, 28 December 1929, Page 22

Amazing Play

“The Batchelor Father" Astonishes London E. O. Carpenter’s play “Th, B* h( . lor Father” comes to the Globe Theatre with a record of America# success and a taste in humour it# seemed to one old-world spectator l 0 be sufficiently astonishing, writes London theatrical critic. The great joke of the play is bfctardy. The grand old English gentle, man gathers together some of ti# exiles of his far-flung family li ne _ olJe is the daughter of an Italian mistress another girl is from New fork, ### there is a boy from Cheltenham. Ha unknown youngsters, who are trough; to this domestic parade in Surrey by an affable solicitor, naturally turn out trumps- At least they are talented The Italian girl sings in grand open the Cheltonian had (complete tja old boy’s blazer) composes muWr and is ultimately enabled to wed the little songstress by his mother’s timeb discovery that he was after all the son of a cavalry officer and not of the squire, who has been paying for him all this time. The third is a “cutio" from New York who does airplane stunts, sings patter songs, and greets her daddy with some amazing guage.

In the end, of course, all is right as right can be. The children are adopted and married off, and the

“cutie” manages to emerge from an airplane crash almost as perky as ever. But the star performer is the bachelor father, Sir Basil Winterton, V.C., K.C.8., K.C.M.G., who is a delicious specimen of the Surrey milord as the American sees him. Sir Basil swills port with his duck, washes it down with liqueurs and whisky in rapid succession, and neither dies nor explodes, but remains as dry an old stick as the austerity of Aubrey Smith’s acting can make him. Another of his habits is to put an eyeglass in his eye and ejaculate "Stout fellah" at regular intervals. No wonder the American “cutie” called him a “grand old scout.” He earned it. At the end of this amazing performance a spirit of curiosity prompted calls for the author, and there emerged a silvery old gentleman who looked like a refined edition of Nr. Pickwick and explained that he was a Yankee. But the whole of whnt occurred on the stage had long ceased to be real at all. The idea that adult humans were actually sitting and laughing at this play and that authentic actors were performing it had been ceased to be tenable hours age. We were in a world of fantasy where Restoration humours and New York idiom were dancing a crazy shuffle in the moonlight and the author whose presence was evoked was the gentle master of unearthly revels. And so to the street and recovery of normal consciousness.