This Molnar play was important in the career of the Lunts – it was one of their first plays together, and they actually filmed it. I can understand their attraction – it’s about a husband and wife acting team in old Vienna, and the husband suspects the wife is unfaithful so he pretends to be a Russian guardsman and hits on her. But I can’t understand audience attraction to it. There’s not much plot apart from the premise: she keeps rejecting the guardsman, then leading him on – then at the end she says she knew all along - for a farce it's very light; there is stuff about the notion of acting, when do we start and stop, etc, but that's not exactly deep. Also, Alfred Lunt really gets on my nerves. Okay this is a personal opinion but he’s got this high pitched whiny voice and he always does vocal “business” – it’s light ham. Fontane was a bit better but honestly their performances here are nothing to write home about.
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