New Play In Manhattan

The Winslow Boy (by Terence Rattigan; produced by the Theatre Guild, H.M. Tennent Ltd. & John C. Wilson) was in real life named George Archer-Shee. Not quite 40 years ago his story--which Playwright Rattigan has followed pretty faithfully--became a cause celebre of Edwardian England; some eight years ago Alexander Woollcott made good quick reading matter of it for snack-loving Americans.

The Winslow boy (Michael Newell) is dismissed, at the age of 13, from the British Royal Naval College at Osborne for stealing and cashing another boy's five-shilling postal order. Back home, he insists to his father (Alan Webb) that he is innocent, whereupon his father launches what proves a back-breaking struggle to clear his son's name. For the elder Winslow, in challenging an arm of the British Navy, has not only the law's delays and bureaucratic red tape to contend with, but the Admiralty's withering self-assurance and the House of Commons' exalted pleasure.

The case becomes far more than one of simple justice or family honor: it involves the sacred Anglo-Saxon principle of individual human rights against even the State itself. On that ground, despite an awful drain on his health and purse, young Winslow's father stubbornly hangs on, and finally wins out.*

Playwright Rattigan (French Without Tears, O Mistress Mine) has made an effective stage piece of the story--so long as the story can be enacted on the stage. Pinched for drama toward the end, Rattigan, who has a trained theater eye for everything, including trash, trots out a lot of mildly mushy heroics. Never as serious a play as its theme demands, The Winslow Boy winds up little more than well-acted, generally interesting entertainment.

*In real life, the father died soon after his son's vindication; the son (aged 19) was killed early in World War I.

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