Better Business

Before Hitler's aerial Blitzkrieg became a reality, the English theatre was in the dumps. Last week, as Nazi bombers swarmed over London, theatrical tills rang loudly again. Going strong were revivals like the Devil's Disciple with Robert Donat, Dear Octopus with aging Marie Tempest. Viewed tepidly by critics, cheered loudly by audiences was Clare Boothe's anti-Nazi comedy Margin for Error, which opened a fortnight ago. Most popular of the musicals was Shepherd's Pie, which after ten months was still turning customers away. Included in the show is a pageant involving Elizabeth, Drake, and a handful of courtiers. Says Elizabeth at the end of the show's first half: "This is our message for all time. . . . The sea is ours, our friends to share it. our enemies to shun it, our men to man it." While lights fade into a cyclorama of a British battleship riding a surging sea, spectators join in singing Land of Hope and Glory, burst into loud applause.

During last week's air raids, queues before the theatres were as long as those before the entrances to London's air-raid shelters. Memorable moment in the his tory of drab suburban Finsbury Park Empire Theatre came in the course of Springtime for Henry. While sirens wailed, Actor Tom Walls quoted Kipling's line: "If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you." Only five people left the theatre, and galleryites shouted: "We're British and we're staying here."

Touring first-aid posts and other stations were the Taverners, a first-rate amateur company which used to play in pubs, giving plays by Shaw, Clifford Bax, Ivor Brown. Soon to open as the Uniform Theatre is the Garrick on Charing Cross Road, which will admit the boy or girl friend of all war workers. Encouraging theatre attendance in Brighton and Ports mouth is a rule: those who have ticket stubs for cinema or theatre are exempt from the curfew law.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.