Only one brief entry for me in this week’s 1937 Club: Goodness, How Sad! by Robert Morley. It’s described as “a comedy in three acts” and while it certainly has three acts, the comedic angle is more suspect.
Dealing with a struggling theatre company currently encamped in an unnamed Midlands town, the entirely of the play takes place in the sitting room of Mrs Priskin’s theatrical lodging house. It is here that Carol and Christine, two young women in the company, are currently residing and where their colleague Peter frequently (especially around mealtimes) visits, much to the annoyance of Mrs Priskin. Carol, the younger of the two women, has just about made up her mind to have an affair with Peter, less out of any passion for the likeable Peter than out of a desire for the experience which she thinks may also improve her acting (“so original”, the more world-weary Christine remarks).
Also about the house are “Mother and Father”, an older married couple who travel the country with performing animals – currently, they have trained seals though Father, properly Captain Otto Angst, still thinks with longing of the beautifully-trained elephants he toured with before the First World War. More mysteriously, there is another lodger who takes great care to stay out of sight. What nefarious past, the girls wonder, is he hiding? Mrs Priskin seems remarkably unperturbed that she is almost certainly (they conclude) harbouring a murder or a sex maniac.
But the real, absorbing interest of the three young people is the failure of their current show and the fate of the upcoming performance of The Constant Nymph. Closure seems imminent and, with it, the loss of a paycheque. It’s not that it’s a bad play or cast, just that it has nothing to capture the town’s audience and lure them away from the lazy allure of the cinema.
When the identify of Mrs Priskin’s other border is revealed, there is suddenly the promise of a saviour: he is not a murder or sex maniac, but Robert Maine, a British theatre actor turned Hollywood movie star. He is hiding out at Mrs Priskin’s for a break from stardom (and perhaps other things) and while Carol and Christine are briefly impressed by his fame, they soon spot the opportunity to save their own futures: after all, wasn’t it the very play they are staging right now that made Maine a star? And surely he wouldn’t mind stepping back into it for a performance or two if it means saving their livelihoods?
Robert, drawn to the lovely Carol, does not mind as it makes it all the easier to conduct his flirtation and Carol, dazzled by fame and eager for experience, is delighted to be swept along. Within days, she’s rethinking her entire future and whether her dedication to the stage is as strong as she once thought.
Suitably, Goodness. How Sad! premiered in the provinces, at the Perranporth Summer Theatre in Cornwall. It reached London in late 1938 and was (based on the reviews in the edition I read) very well received there with frankly overly generous praise about its wittiness and charm. I think the News-Chronicle came closest to the mark when it claimed “It easily persuades you to laugh: it comes near to making you cry” because, yes, it has its humour but it is also a story about disillusionment and the heartbreak wrought by longed-for experience.
The Captive Reader 