The Theater: New Playlets In Manhattan, Oct. 24, 1949

The Browning Version and A Harlequinade (by Terence Rattigan; produced by Maurice Evans in association with Stephen Mitchell) stars Maurice Evans and Edna Best in a double bill requiring their British accents. As playwrighting, it is not too far from double bilge; Rattigan’s study of a defeated schoolmaster is only a shade less routine than his spoofing of ham actors. As entertainment, however, there is a substantial difference between the two. The Browning Version, besides being almost exhilaratingly grim, gives everybody a chance to act; A Harlequinade ‘encourages everybody to over-cavort.

Schoolmaster Andrew Crocker-Harris of The Browning Version is not just grey from pedagogical dust, but is black and withered with failure. Disliked by his pupils, disdained by the headmaster, he is endlessly tortured by his snob and shrew and slut of a wife, who makes him the confidant as well as the victim of her infidelities. When a pupil suddenly floods him with happiness by bringing him a present, his wife promptly points out that the gift is doubtless really a bribe. At the end, thanks to the prodding of his wife’s rebellious lover, Crocker-Harris shows signs of rebelling too—a final twist of theater in a work that, despite its realistic trappings, is actually all theater, even though it is effectively contrived and played.

In A Harlequinade, a hammy theatrical troupe, while rehearsing Romeo and Juliet, encounters all manner of real-life crises, from bigamy to illegitimate children. Faced with such stupendous greasepaint problems as who shall stand where and who shall wear what, the stage folk quickly brush the non-stage problems aside. A relentlessly jolly burlesque, A Harlequinade is occasionally funny.