Cast of Characters

It is disappointing to find Mr. Hastings Turner in Every Woman's Privilege dropping to the level of conventional comedy and imagining that a garnish of epigrams and symbolism—the latter mainly concerned with a garden statue of Cupid—can disguise its hackneyed material. The clash between the standpoints of youth and age, between ingenuous daughter and conservative parent, is all very well as a subject of drama, but surely it is time youth and girlhood were presented in the theatre with some approximation to common-sense and common experience. who is not tired by now of the stage girl who knows nothing of and cares nothing for love, whose sex instincts are dormant, who engages herself in cold blood to a fish of a man so that she may turn amateur politician and live a life of earnestness? Of such a type is Dahlia Lavory, child of a rich baronet and M.P., who in irritation with a match-making aunt, not to be paralleled outside theatre-land, finds inspiration in a red-tied and impossible gauche socialist zealot and agrees to work with him as his fiancée in London on the express condition that they are no to marry. In Bloomsbury, where she sets up a "bachelor" flat, the young Socialist writes "I love you" on his type-script, and is bidden to kiss her if it will do him any good; but his ideas of love are of the most tepid sort, and he is more excited over succeeding to the baronet's seat than embracing the baronet's daughter, despite the soulfullness of the articles she dictates to him for the Labour Press. Why Dahlia's father should consent to sacrifice his place in Parliament to a youth whose opinions and personality he detests it is hard to discover, save that it is part of a cure for the heroine planned by a rejected suitor of hers, a country neighbour of the Lavorys stimulated out of his ordinary lethargy by his rejection. another part of his remedy is to storm the young lady's flat at night, the father waiting outside the door, and to take her violently in his arms and teach her what man is "with the lid off." To his dismay—and it is one of the first natural things she has said—she bids him "Kiss me, kiss me"; but that would never do in the second act , and so the kiss has to be delayed till a third long-drawn act is nearly through and her father can keep her company by making love before the garden Cupid to an ardent widow. There is plenty of charm in Miss Marie Löhr, and she turns out her slang speeches very engagingly, but even she cannot lend consistency or probability to such a character as Dahlia. She has good support from Mr. Herbert Ross as the father, Mr. Basil Rathbone as the Socialist, Miss Helen Rous as the venomous aunt, Miss Vane Featherstone as the widow ripe for a fresh marriage, and Mr. C. M. Hallard as the spouter of epigrams; it is not their fault if they do not make the story convincing. But Miss Löhr really should not emphasise the artificiality of the play by giving us a garden in which wistaria (so it seemed), rambler roses, clematis, hollyhocks and sunflowers all bloom simultaneously. If we may not have humanity, let us have our flowers according to Nature in the playhouse.

—The Illustrated London News, October 16, 1920

The rebellious daughter is the peg on which Mr. J. Hastings Turner has hung the comedy that marked the welcome reappearance of Miss Marie Löhr at the globe. The piece is very smartly written, and has any amount of epigrams and clever lines that cloak a certain artificiality that pervades the whole play. Thus, while we are amused by the witty dialogue, the characters fail to excite sympathy or interest, except of the mildest, so obviously are they of sawdust instead of flesh and blood.

Miss Marie Löhr's charm and beauty and brains almost make Dahlia Lavory a convincing personage. Dahlia is a modern daughter, who not only refuses to call a spade a garden implement, but allows herself the latitude of the classic phrase employed by Samuel Wilberforce. Dahlia has an aunt who is enough to drive any girl of spirit to rebellion, a father who loves sleep and peace and "hated rest cures, so he went into the House of commons" (this is not a fair sample of the author's humour), and an admirer, Mortimer Jerrold, who was good-looking, highly polished, cut on very conventional lines, and had £12,000 a year. Dahlia was overwhelmed by this accumulation of blessings and struck. As a beginning she sought relief by inviting missions to her father's delightful house in the country and entertaining them to tea and romps in the paddock. Then, finding this means of escape inadequate, she persuaded the Secretary to the mission, a young man with a lot of red tie and a diffident manner, to consent to a spurious engagement. To scandalise her family still more. Dahlia announces that she is going off to London with Harold Glaive (the secretary), and the two are to start a joint and platonic career in Bloomsbury.

Everything happens as planned, and we find the pair in Bloomsbury in Dahlia's rooms engrossed in literature and politics—engrossed, that is, so far as Dahlia is concerned, for propinquity and opportunity have been too much for the young Socialist, and he is head-over-heels in love. The scene between the two is entertaining, the man "sloppy" (the word is Dahlia's) with sentimentality, the girl annoyingly cool, at what she considers "a case of distemper" in her colleague, indifferently permitting him the kiss he craves. Aided by the girl's father, the rich admirer resolves to teach her a lesson that will cause her to lose her supreme confidence in herself. The theft of her latchkey enables him to let himself into her rooms late at night to play the "bold, bad man" (with Sir James as hidden chaperon in the hall). Conscious of the presence of a hidden chaperon of her own in the bedroom, Dahlia thoroughly enjoys herself, and leads Jerrold on to the inevitable fierce embrace, but the "game that began between them as a jest" ends in unexpected sincerity. The test kiss brings out the truth, and, to her own disgust. Dahlia is forced to admit that Cupid, "the infernal little sniper," has disarmed her at last.

Miss Marie Löhr makes Dahlia a delightful type of the modern English girl, impetuous, self-willed, healthy in body and mind, and overflowing with vitality. Mr. C. M. Hallard is an exquisitely polished Mortimer Jerrold, and Mr. Basil Rathbone does his excellent best to impart actuality to the character of Harold Glaive. Miss Vane Featherstone is delightful as a sympathetic widow, and Mr. Herbert Ross is admirable as the kindly, sleepy Sir James, while as the domineering aunt, Miss Helen Rous plays with her usual sense of character.

—The Era, October 6, 1920

The Passing Shows

I wish I could prophesy a "winner" for Miss Marie Löhr in her new autumn production, every woman's Privilege, by Mr. J. Hastings Turner. Few managements deserve better fortune than that of the Globe Theatre—and few have had more indifferent luck. But frankly, this new comedy is so purely artificial and "thin"—not to say "absurd"—that, apart from the acting her and there, it is difficult to find any interest in it whatsoever. Describing the characters will tell you exactly the kind of piece it is. First of all there is a young Socialist, who seems so utterly without character, so determined to get under the table, as it were, at the very first sign of a row, that, honestly, I would have thought twice before asking him to paint the servant's bath, much less to represent me in Parliament. He wears a red tie—and that is the most determined thing about him. Then there is a middle-aged man who is supposed to be in love with the heroine—only she despises love, and is all for a "career." When he is not speaking in either epigrams or metaphor—which, for all practical purposes, is every time he opens his mouth—he is telling people that he has  £12,000 a year! Then there is the heroine's father—doting, not to say "doddering"—who is an M.P., with a fixed habit of crying "Damn" by way of showing that he is a man of spirit—though no one could, even then, be convinced of that fact. On the other side—there is the heroine. She gives parties in her father's garden to troops of what sounded like children from the East End, headed by the young Socialist. When her parents speak of matrimony—chiefly apropos of the man with  £12,000 a year—she cries out that she refuses to be mated like cattle, and hies her to Bloomsbury, where she becomes the secretary of the young Socialist—and apparently has herself to inspire him to be anything at all. On the war path, in search of her, is an elderly aunt—so consistently rude that it amounted to an affliction. The only other character is a pleasant, middle-aged widow, quite honestly after the heroine's father.

The great scene of the play is the one is which the man with £12,000 a year comes to the heroine's room in Bloomsbury with the determination to awaken her womanhood, by sheer force if necessary. Of course it is only a "plot"—because this is quite a "nice" play—and one cannot get very excited over it, because we know that the heroine's father is listening to everything going on from the other side of the door, and the heroine has her own chaperon in the next room, in the person of the pleasant widow, to dash in at the psychological moment and save the situation. It is really rather absurd—because, except for a mild kind of proposal of marriage, the action of the man with £12,000 a year seemed more the act of a man of weak intellect than a Don Juan out to do his "worst." Naturally, nothing comes of it, except that by forcing the heroine into his arms she—who had jeered at love and all its maneuvers—found the position so pleasant that in the last act she marries her pretended seducer. I understand that in the somewhat revised version of this comedy the girl now marries the Socialist after he has wrenched the parliamentary seat from her father—(though how any self-respecting constituency could have voted for either of them remains a mystery)—which is certainly more probable, but rather robs the title, Every Woman's Privilege, of its point. As all these indeterminate people, the Globe Theatre company do their very best to make them alive. Miss Marie Löhr looks charming—not to say charmingly overdressed for the secretary of a Socialist who wished, at the same time, to keep her character—as the heroine, but she could make nothing definite of this "doll playing with realities." Mr. Basil Rathbone has a hopeless kind of part as the young Socialist, but he looks rather attractive—and that is all anybody could do with such a role.

—The Tatler, October 13, 1920