Quadrille

While awaiting the first curtain of Quadrille, the playgoer can glance over the program and figure out in the main what form the play is going to take. Listed on the bill are a Reverend Edgar Speven, a Gwendolyn (His Daughter) and a Catchpole. There is also a noblewoman with an awesome surname and a placid given one, The Marchioness of Heronden (Serena). Since this part is played by Lynn Fontanne and since the author is Noel Coward, the playgoer can settle back with complacence. The play may be several rungs down from Wilde, but it will be on the same satirical ladder.

Near the bottom of the program comes the line "Axel Diensen. . . Alfred Lunt," the first tip-off to the pre-curtain speculator that this might not be the crisp nonsense he expects. Then the curtain goes up and it is clear that Mr. Coward and Mr. Lunt are equally dubious about this Diensen fellow. Diensen, it turns out, is a Minnesota railroad baron who, by the author's admission, doesn't fit into the life of either Boston or Belgrave Square. Diensen doesn't seem at home on the stage of the Colonial either.

The problem, perhaps, is one of co-ordination. When Diensen is supposed to be tongue-tied and vulgar, Lunt is self-conscious and primly profane. Then Coward reverses his field and Diensen must be lyrically vision ary; here Lunt is up to the task but Coward falters. With long monologues about the physical glories of prospering America, Diensen drags his heels and the pace of the vehicle is reduced still further. Coward has been much more entertaining about Brooklyn than he is now about the rest of the United States.

Regrettably the part can spoil the whole. When the play concerns itself only with marital exchanges, everyone is visibly more comfortable. Coward handles this type of misadventure with a high style which makes even the exposition glitter. Miss Fontanne is an actress of this same style and so is rewarded with the best of the play's dialogue. Or perhaps she merely makes it seem the best; she is capable of that deception.

Edha Best and Brain Aherne play the sinned against and sinning mates of the Lunts. Both are agreeable, thereby undermining the Coward intent at every turn. Aherne displays more character and less foppish romanticism that the author seemed to have in mind. Miss Best, looking winning and dove-like, is asked only to coo and weep. Cecil Beaton's sets are tastefully appropriate; his idea of Serena's sitting room seems about what the Marchioness herself would choose.

These is little more to Quadrille. The wrong couples rightly get together at the end and depart for the railroad as a string quintet in the pit breaks into action.