'MAN AND BOY'

As Glorious Swindler, Boyer Steals Show

By PETER BELLAMY tional wheeler dealer has amassed a business combine That elegant, suave and dramatic Frenchman, Charles in part by sheer force of perBoyer, as star of Terence sonality and in part by obtaining huge loans based on nonRattigan's play, "Man and existent or forged security. To Boy," at Broadway's Brooks him, international grand larAtkinson Theater, is present-ceny is not only a way of making a magnificent bravura tour de force.

So much of a one-man show is this play that the 64-year-old Boyer has no stand-in. Should he catch cold, be hit by a truck,

ing millions, but a stimulating, fascinating game.

Like Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo, this conscienceless rogue is never more restlessly active than in the face of utter destruction. In his dealings with the foreign and American business tycoons who are closing in on him, his charm is overwhelming and his mendacity most Indisposed, the performance persuasive. His mind whizzes vould have to be canceled. like an IBM machine. There is nobody who could! conceivably replace him.

or be otherwise

PETER BELLAMY

THE APARTMENT to

As a drama based upon the which he has fled is owned by life of a fabulous international his illegitimate son, who has financier and swindler, sug-changed his name and sought

murder.

gested by the career of the to find total escape from the fair with her chauffeur with Swedish match king, Ivor father whom he once tried to her husband's cynical assent. Kreuger, "Man and Boy," is a highly intriguing character study. But as a play it is verbose, static and several times needlessly contrived.

Since it is firmly estabBOYER ADMITS to having lished that the rogue would once known a notorious swinstop at nothing, including dler, but the matter of his blackmail, to save himself, I having assumed some of the found playwright Rattigan's latter's traits for the part is a SUCH ACTION as the play device of having the son used moot point. However, at every offers is continuous and takes as a lure to a homosexual point in the play-and ne is place in a basement apart-businessman quite unneces-on stage at all times-he is ment in Greenwich Village] sary. the complete, compelling and during a July evening in 1934. Unbelievable is the characmagnetic master of the situaThe apartment is a hideaway ter of the knave's wife. Intion.

In which the swindler tries stead of having a highborn He oozes charm, wit and indesperately to stave off ex-if penniless wife to add an telligence, even as he inspires posure and save his crashing aura of respectability to his implicit trust and confidence financial empire from ruin. criminal activities, he has in his victims. His projection Like the late Kreuger, who married a most obvious kind of outraged virtue is superb. also took his life, this internaof trull who is having an af-While simulating a stroke, he

appears to turn gray before the audience' eyes. The play isn't much. Boyer is tremendous.

David Beeston is entirely human as the furious young accountant who knows that the swindler is a liar and a cheat but can't quite convince his stuffed-shirt boss of that obvious fact.

Geoffrey Keen commands credulity as Boyer's first assistant crook, as do Barry Justice as the son and Louise Sorel as his alluring mistress. Austin Willis, as the deviate business man, and Jane Downs, as the wife, are handicapped by ill conceived roles.