DIVORCES GRANTED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 862, 4 January 1930, Page 20

DIVORCES GRANTED

Well-Known Actress 1 Given Decree Nisi EVELYN LAYE ALSO SUEING Three actresses were granted decrees nisi in the London Divorce Court recently in one day. Jessie Matthews was granted a decree nisi against her husband, Mr. Alva Lytton, on the ground of his mis-

ground oi ms misconduct with a woman unknown at Brighton. The suit was not defended, but Mrs. Lytton asked for the discretion of the court in her favour because of her owrf misconduct with Mr. Munro, who is well known on the

wen Known on rue stage as Sonnie Hale. It was stated that it was the intention of Mrs. Lytton and Mr. Munro to marry when both are free. Mrs. Lytton, who is 22, and was married on February 17, 1926, at the Hammersmith Registry Office, gave evidence. Sonnie Hale, who is appearing with Miss Matthews in “Wake Up and Dream,” the Cochran production at ■'the new Streatham Hill Theatre, said that his wife, Evelyn Laye, is instituting divorce proceedings against him. Miss Laye is at present appearing in New York in Noel Coward’s “Bitter Sweet.” They were married at St. James’s Church, Spanish Place, on April 10, 1926. PARIS THEATRE PLAY ABOUT MADMAN RATHER BITTER HUMOUR Alfred Savoir is one of the most interesting of the present generation of French playwrights, writes a theatrical correspondent to the “New York Times.” He is a Jew, and like several other Jewish dramatic authors of today, he has deliberately set himself to find out how to write effective plays which shall please the public before writing interesting ones which shall please himself. It is the best method, for in the theatre, which simply cannot exist without the public and cannot afford to wait for it, to end by being highbrow is wiser than to begin with it. Anyhow, it is a method which gives a particular quality to the work of a playwright who adopts it. He is always first of all an entertainer. Since Alfred Savoir first assured his hold upon the public in this capacity, he has written several plays of a more ambitious character. The best of them was “Le Dompteur.” It cannot be said that “Lui,” his latest play, quite reaches that level. If its central idea allows for all sorts of philosophic developments and all sorts of illustrations of the religious instinct of mankind, these developments and these allusions are made very lightly, and the play never ceases to be a fantastic comedy of incident, even a farce. This central idea is that a charming madman, escaped from a lunatic asylum, believes—or is, at least, sure —that he is God. With the cautious cunning of insanity, he is careful not to attempt to exercise the omnipotence which he is convinced he possesses. It is only after events happen that he persuades himself and suggests to others that he had caused them. However, once he is tempted to depart from this course of wisdom. It is when he determines that the lady with whom he has fallen in love shall love him. He finds that he has no power, and suddenly becomes sane enough to understand that he is mad. He has managed, however, to persuade the lady not to return his love, but to acknowledge his divinity; and when he disappears at the end as mysteriously as he had arrived, he leaves behind him two women—the lady in question and a half-witted child —who are his convinced disciples, In the course of his stay at the mountain hotel, at which a congress of Free Thinkers has just decided that God does not exist, he has also succeeded both in shaking their atheism and in putting an end to a strike of the staff which has disorganised the establishment. „ All this gives opportunity for effective comedy, which occasionally suggests Bernard Shaw and occasionally Pirandello, and for a touch of cruel and rather bitter humour and a disenchanted philosophy which even suggests Voltaire. Thus we learn that God is impartial when He is not on the side of the propertied classes, who, for their part are quite certain that He is on their side; that women need a remote and ideal God all the more when they cannot do without a material and fleshly man; that God is no louder master of what He has created; that man, if he can do without God, cannot do without calling upon His name, and that it is the simple-minded who are quite satisfied that God exists.