What a glorious mess of jealousy, infidelity, murder and aborted intrigue! But with what stylishness all this advanced and intelligent cruelty is worked out! I have never seen Eric Portman in a sympathetic character, more often than not he has been an almost unilaterally determined murderer and nothing else, and this time he is married to the overly beautiful Greta Gynt. Of course he must love her with a passion which makes it impossible for him to live without her, but how little he knows her! You must not trifle with lovely women,for their beauty will always give them the upper hand on you, and you will be helpless. For all his intelligence and perfect scheming, Portman commits the one mistake of actually believing that his wife loves him when she tells him so, and of course she does, but in her own way. In fact, Portman in all his brilliant superiority of intelligent calculation is the only one who commits mistakes, and he does it all the time and doesn't even notice it, deluded as he is by his own self-confidence and trust in his own perfection, which is hopelessly hollow.
Dennis Price as usual makes a brilliant appearance, although unwillingly awkward, while Greta Gynt is the main attraction of this extremely intellectually stimulating play. It's impossible to guess the outcome, and when the desperate chess love game is finished and everyone beaten, only Greta Gynt remains and makes her exit with a hearty laugh. Well, for a lovely woman like her with all those lovers and cavaliers, victims and wrecks, she is superior enough to detach herself from her own tragedy with a laugh.
Murder is no laughing matter, and Dennis Price for one understands that too well, while all the others... Anyway, Greta Gynt definitely has the last laugh.
