Caroline

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

Mr Maugham calls his new play a farce, but is has far more of the comedic spirit than nine-tenths of our so called comedies. Most of it is, indeed, I fear, to subtle and psychological for the average audience. Caroline has lived apart from her husband for ten years, the only reason she gives her friends being that he was afflicted with adenoids, which she couldn't bear. Robert has been “devoted” to her all this time and when, at the beginning of the the play, her husband's death in South Africa appears in the Times, their friends all assume that they will be married at once. But they have got accustomed to their platonic intimacy and neither wishes to change. Their friends however, make such a fuss that they agree to marry, and after a quarrel as to whose house they shall live in, they decide to take a new one and Caroline telephones house agents. Then, in Act III, a scene of pure fun comes off. The house agent, has adenoids, and Caroline cunningly contrives that Robert and the friends, who come while he is with her, shall think it is her husband, not really dead. Robert immediately becomes “devoted” again, and the moral, that it is the unattainable which is desired,, is duplicated in the case of a young man also devoted. There is a slight touch of bitterness underlying the humour of the comedy, but there is no touch of anything to trouble the Lord Chamberlain's Office. Recommended for Licence. (S.d) G. S. Street.7