“THE SWAN”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1058, 23 August 1930, Page 24

“THE SWAN”

Molnar Comedy Loses Subtlety in Translation The title of Ferenc Molnar’s play, “The Swan,” was the only cool thing in St. James’s Theatre, on the opening night, writes a London critic. And when the Princess Alexandra was described as a dignified swan moving slowly through the waters, the irony was too bitter to bear. Edna Best looked cool, at any rate, but she was a swan with difficulty. She was simple, but not with the romantic, strange simplicity the dramatist evidently intended her to possess.

For the whole idea of this play is

that the Princess Alexandra lends herself to her mother’s plan of making the backward Prince Albert jealous of the good-loolung tutor, and then finds herself in waters too troublous for a swan. She really learns what love may be. As a protest against Prince Albert’s insulting manner to the tutor, she actually kisses him. The tutor looks on it as only a mark of pity, and so does Albert the next morning. Even Albert’s mother, the Princess Maria Dominica, as well as her brother and uncle, all consider the kiss a natural expression of kindliness 1 ! But the Swan herself, while ready to accept Albert as husband for the sake of the dynasty, knows in her bewildered little heart that the kiss was not inspired by mere kindliness.

Ferine Moluar’s plays have never been successful in London. Their stiffness and heaviness of translation has obscured the subtlety of their satire and the delicacy of their sentiment. Nor have they been well cast. “The Swan” is no exception. Colin Clive is not the actor to impersonate a reserved young professor who has the heart of a poet, and Herbert Marshall is wasted on the lethargic but generous Prince Albert. I should like to exchange the parts. Henrietta Watson, as the managing mother, Princess Beatrice, is splendid. She and C. V. France, as Father Hyacinth, are the making of the play, and Irene Vanbrugh, as Albert’s mother, brings a breath of real vital comedy into the end of the piece. It is glorious to see her sweep across the stage which has been the scene, of many of her triumphs. In spite of the heat, the stiff translation, and the errors in casting, “The Swan” interested the audience. It has style and a certain delicacy of thought and treatment.