THE YOUNG ACTRESS.

I hold firmly the opinion that it is the Critic’s duty to judge a play strictly by results, and not in the light of any accidental knowledge he may have of the circumstances under which the play has been produced. I know people who hold the opposite view, and are ready to uphold it; but personally I like to know as little as possible beforehand concerning the subject of a new play and who is to act in it. Only twice, therefore, in the last few weeks, do I happen to have been told of difficulties in the casting of forthcoming plays; and in each case it was the task of filling the ingenue part that caused the trouble. It seems that there aren’t any young actresses about; which is surely a very surprising and regrettable state of affairs – if it really exists. At first glance it seems absurd to suggest that there could be the slightest difficulty in finding two pretty young actresses with enough charm and talent to act two wellbred but quite ordinary maidens. If it were a question of finding somebody new to play a girl like Sydney Fairfield in “A Bill of Divorcement,” then I grant you there would be a difficulty; Miss Meggie Albanesi does seem to stand quite alone for the moment among our youngest generation of actresses – those, I mean, who have made their first appearance within the last five or six years. But that nobody can be found to take “flapper” or ingenue parts satisfactorily does not sound possible. I can without difficulty think of half a dozen or more young actresses not now appearing in London who could have played either of the two parts in question perfectly well. It may be, of course, that circumstances of which I have no knowledge have put these ladies out of the running; they may have made their way in a solid phalanx to church, for instance, and have got married to husbands who have required them instantly to leave the stage. But I somehow feel that a much more likely reason is that the producers have got into a groove, and consequently have not given the available material a proper looking over, I went to a cinema theatre the other day, where I saw a rather inadequate version of a popular novel. The one redeeming feature about this film was the acting; and all the female parts were filled by young British actresses, not one of whom have I seen in anything but a very small part in London. Of course, on the film you can’t tell what an actress’s voice is going to be like; and unfortunately, a girl who looks like a thoroughbred on the film may turn out to be impossible for a similar part on the stage, owing to her accent. But barring untoward accidents of this kind, I am sure that two or three of the girls in this film are worth trying in bigger parts; and I am equally sure that (there must be a good many more young actresses about just as good as these, if only they were given a chance of showing what they can do.