Betty at Bay

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Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a pretty sentimental comedy, for the most part natural and well-written. It begins in Kensington Gardens, where Betty is discovered ‘mothering’ a lot of children, she being a girl of twenty one. Betty falls in love with Dick, a young officer on sick leave and he carries her off and marries her and rushes back to France. She goes down to the house of his father, a crusty old baronet. He is furious with her, but all the servants leave and she has to stay to cook the dinner. So far it is light comedy only, with an atmosphere of children and irresponsibility. But then Dick's death is reported and his father grows gloomier and gloomier, especially because he thinks Betty will not have a child. There is a scene between them in which the girl convinces him of her love for Dick, which he doubted, and after a passionate outburst about not having a child, falls in a faint. The doctor is sent for and diagnoses her case as being that she is going to have a child. All this business about there being or not being a child is put plainly but with true delicacy and without the slightest offence (in these days) for any but an unusually prudish mind. So Betty and her father-in-law are friends at last and then, as the audience would expect, Dick turns up alive. The lighter parts are the best, but the sentiment is sincere. Recommended for licence. G. S. Street