POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE

A first novel from a well-known playwright inevitably has the earmarks of a play in the making. The situations are highlighted for advancing the plot; the dialogue is full of the kind of nuances and double entendres and sly humor that one associates with Noel Coward. And the overall picture affords endless opportunities. Unfortunately, Noel Coward does not seem to have made up his mind which of two plots to use:- he has first the temptation of endless opportunities offered when a remote Pacific Island in the British Empire is confronted with the pending visit of the Queen and Prince Philip; he then complicates the lives of the principals further by injecting a liaison between a London beauty and a local bachelor who thinks that at last he has really fallen in love. He pursues first one thread, then the other, and while the affaire and all its complications of chicken pox and sexual deviations proceeds to a happy ending, the preparations for the royal visit come to complete disaster without beginning to explore the possibilities. The substance is of less concern in final analysis than the method of handling it.