The Thin Red Line

By T.E.K.

Two young subalterns, fresh from England, join Kipling's army in India in those late-19th century days when the officers' mess jackets and half of the map of the globe were colored a royal red. It is a very pukka sahib regiment, that of Barry England's play Conduct Unbecoming, with a code of ethics, clique loyalties, and a voracious fondness for pig-sticking and whisky. One of the subalterns, 2nd Lieut. Arthur Drake (Paul Jones), has come to the regiment with tunes of glory lilting in his head and an earnest determination to uphold the honor of soldiering. The other, 2nd Lieut. Edward Millington (Jeremy Clyde), the son of a general, is disdainfully disenchanted with the military. A kind of Victorian dropout, he intends to get busted and return to the bliss of civilian life. Millington quickly breaks regimental protocol and gets himself cordially detested by everyone from the colonel on down to Drake, his neophyte comrade-in-arms.

At a regimental ball, which seems to be the briskest, and perhaps the most arduous, campaign that this outfit was ever engaged in, Millington makes an unsuccessful pass at Mrs. Marjorie Hasseltine (Elizabeth Shepherd), who has a sub rosa reputation for being a courtesan among young subalterns. She charges him with attacking her, and a regimental court-martial is convened.

Relentless Quest. Through the bulk of the trial scenes, a tension is built up that has probably not been felt in the Broadway theater since The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. Drake, to his considerable dismay, is picked to defend Millington, but he goes about it with a cool, indefatigable, relentless quest for the truth. Mrs. Hasseltine, it turns out, has indeed been attacked, but not by Millington. As Drake zeroes in on the real culprit, he also unearths evidence that the much-vaunted "honor" of the regiment is something of a mockery.

If tension works for Conduct Unbecoming most of the way, so does nostalgia. These are the Britons who remain romantic heroes in the memories of most middle-aged Americans. Here, they are--the stiff-upper-lipped thin red line, brave, dashing, loyal and incredibly handsome. They always saved the day at some hellish outpost of empire among tsetse flies and assagais. Watching Conduct Unbecoming is almost like seeing the ghost of Lord Kitchener trouncing Lucky Jim.

Blanket Indictments. The play, like that vision, finally falls apart. The point of collapse comes when Mrs. Hasseltine withdraws her charges against Millington and turning on the assembled officers, says, "You are scum." Playwright England hasn't prepared the audience for anything like that, either as a Brechtian blast at the military or in terms of the actual behavior of the officers involved. It refutes common sense to make blanket indictments of any group of men, whether they be army officers, policemen or stockbrokers. The person most qualified to know this is Mrs. Hasseltine herself, who has traded on the genuine honor and outrage of most of the officers in pressing her charges. In referring to Millington, Mrs. Hasseltine goes on to say, "He is the only gentleman I have met in all my years with this regiment." But he has not acted remotely like a gentleman, only like a sour, spoiled, self-indulgent brat. Besides, Mrs. Hasseltine is in the weakest position to raise any moral questions since it is she who has maligned an innocent man's character. Even as plot jockeying, this kind of dishonest playwriting does not pay, for the audience feels in the end that the emotion, interest and belief that it has invested in the play have all been exploited and betrayed.

The cast is totally honest and utterly skillful. It is difficult to imagine two young actors more sensitively attuned to their roles than Paul Jones as Drake and Jeremy Clyde as Millington. For the rest, Britannia may no longer rule the waves, but it reigns in the playhouses of London and New York with acting of the highest style.

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