Theatre: The Man Who Reclaimed His Head.

The head, in this case, is that of Henri Berthaud, Wartime Premier of France, which an army officer deposits on a lawyer’s table in the opening scene. It then develops that the officer, misshapen, ugly and half mad, had made Henri Berthaud Premier by writing his speeches, editing his newspaper. Afraid of the world because of his deformities, he had injected his personality into Berthaud’s handsome person, for which Berthaud had repaid him by stealing his pretty wife. Finding Berthaud in his bedroom, he had chopped off his head with a glittering bayonet.

A melodrama. The Man Who Reclaimed His Head is often exciting, but it is more often tiresome. Last week’s audiences applauded Claude Rains’s bombastic interpretation of the hapless monster, almost hissed the polished villainies of Stuart Casey, but most likely it was pretty Jean Arthur who gave them all their pleasure.