New Play in Manhattan

Quadrille brought the Lunts back to Broadway in a Noel Coward period piece they had played for two seasons in London. It is, for Coward, rather Victorian in spirit as well as in setting; it scents its sinfulness with lavender, bodices its escalades in whalebone. The story takes a long evening to unfold, but can be summarized in a sentence. A marchioness and an American rail baron pursue their eloping spouses (Edna Best and Brian Aherne), fall in love while separating the lovers, and themselves elope in turn.

The whole thing is decorously romantic --for it is always infinitely seemlier for the Lunts to live in sin together than in the utmost respectability apart. Throughout the evening, they offer slightly grander and more empedestaled versions of their time-honored selves; and by now, indeed, Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt are much less actors than roles. Now, once again, they manifest their uniqueness. She provides a heraldic squeal or purr; he drops to a sudden flawless guttural pianissimo; each not merely throws away a line, but throws it, with a double backward flip, over an exiting left shoulder.

Wearing Cecil Beaton's bright costumes, traversing a brilliant Beaton drawing-room, the Lunts play Quadrille to the hilt. The only trouble is that there is no blade. The play's light volleys of wit come from a Coward who only plays doubles and no longer will go to the net; from a Coward who has written more like some fondly reminiscing oldster than a mocking enfant terrible--and with an oldster's fearful garrulousness. But however unthinkable Quadrille would be without the Lunts, with them Coward's very mildness is not altogether unwelcome.

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