Evening star., 1950-08-30

prominence OF GQOSG aSS6upleQ ne
Most prominent Of these is Ju
virtually nowhere to overnight
stardom as the harassed heroine
of Angel Street." AS the times
most tortured woman, Miss Evelyn
wrung the hearts Of Broadwayites
for three seasons in the play, and
as every one knows this is one step
beyond getting blood out of a
turnip or making silk purses out of
nylon.
Miss Evelyn's associates here in
clude Ernest Cossart, Ferdi Hoff-
man and others who shared the
melodrama's earlier popularity.
More or less naturally. they are
not as smooth as when they were
continuously employed in angel
Street." but they repeat largely
what they said before, that Patrick
wrote q superb shocker.
They did it last night under the
handicap Of q grotesque mishap
in the third act. when a couple
of amateur performers did the
dramas most amateurish job of
binding the villain to his chair.
\ II II
Even those who know how the
game ends between the mad young
Manningham couple will be i'm
pressed again with the excellence
OF Hamilton's play. These we'll
informed ones constitute con-
siderable share of the population.
in view of the fact that Ingrid
Bergman and Charles Boyer
played it as a film entitled Gas
light" Even at this late date,
however, the Manninghams are
the married pair who even things
UP with all those other couples
who marry and live happily ever
after.
Angel Street" is a vivacious de-
parture from the run of summer
theater productions. It puts a
premium upon acting, which is
virtually famine item when the
temperature gets above rs degrees
in this country. or any other
where actors are not shot for
deviating.
Hamilton put this burden upon
his actors when he decided to tell
the story of a gentle girl who
married homicidal maniac
whose vanity was more pleased to
drive his wife insane than to kill
her. There is nothing boring
about a couple like this and when
you throw in an artful and comic
old codger who could not really
retire from Scotland Yard. that
makes three quite dramatic hui
mans.
Miss Evelyn's role is the most
difficult of the three in Angel
Street"
Her task is that of showing how
vulnerable a normal mind can be
to the cunning attack Of gifted
maniac. When the play begins,
she is a mere shred of her old
sweet self, helpless to resist her
husbands suggestion that she is
repeating the history Of her poor
mother who died in madhouSe.
Under his spell, she believes that
she does remove pictures from the
wall and hide them childishly:
that she :uislays the grocery bill:
that the loses the special little
gifts his love inspires him to bring
her; that she is losing her mind.
1t Is at this moment that the
old Scotland Yard man drops in,
to check on hunch he had is
years before when he was active in
the detective trade. That his su-
periors refused to follow his theory
at the time has worried him ever
since. If Mrs. Manningham does
not mind, and no woman ever had
less reason to mind, he would like
to resume work on the case.
No policeman ever arrived more
In the nick of time.
X X *
Hamilton's play is the more re-
markable in that it has virtually
nothing to go on but talk, espe-
cially during the first two acts.
It is brilliant talk, expertly han
died by the principals. It is aimed
principally at frightening the wits
Where and When
Current Theoter Attractions
and Time Of Showing
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