IN a time of national mourning, the theatre can offer temporary respite and this month I have discovered hidden treasure in London’s off-West End venues. I would urge anyone within reach of the tiny Finborough Theatre in Earl’s Court to rush there to see Distinguished Villa by Kate O’Brien. First staged in 1926 and scarcely revived since, this is a thumping good play quite superbly acted and directed.
Miss O’Brien later became famous as a novelist—indeed in Celia Johnson asks a librarian for ‘the new Kate O’Brien’—and here launches a fierce attack on the fatal consequences of sham gentility. The