"The Voice of the Turtle" was a love story, a good simple play; "The Mermaids Sing" was a love story with complications; but in his newest achievement, John Van Druten has allowed the complications to overpower the story, and the result is not a good play. He is still just as good a technician as ever, and "The Druid Circle" moves forward with an oiled speed that is sure to keep you awake and lively for the full two and a half hours. Though threadss are dropped aimlessly all over the last two acts, they are line, colored, interesting threads, spun by an expert, if careless, craftsman.

Van Druten's first mistake was in trying to write a problem play. His most successful theme, romance, is subordinated to the handy role of a device to keep things moving, while the problem, modern education, pops in and out of the play, and is never resolved or even treated in concrete dramatic terms. Through the irrelevancies and the scenes of simpering young love, the main theme had difficulty holding its own. An aging professor, envious of the love shared by two of his students, tries desperately to come by it vicariously, gloats over one of their captured love letters, and makes everyone unhappy, while intensifying his own insecurities. Attention further wanders from this basically good plot by the constant appearance of seven other people, professors, helpful friends, and relatives, most of whom are, though interesting characters, extraneous to the plot.

Excellent acting keeps "The Druid Circle" amusing and alive. Leo G. Carroll succeeds in the difficult task of keeping a bitter and disillusioned old man sympathetic even when he tries to destroy the love of two young people. But the most spectacular playing last night was done by Ethel Griffies, in the role of the professor's mother. The part has little relation to the story, but the comedy of this ancient hypochondriac is almost worth the price of orchestra seats. The other actors fill in smoothly, except perhaps for the one playing the young girl in love, whose stylized cuteness is like nothing seen off the stage. The sets are a little too elegant for the homes of underpaid English schoolmasters, but they do look good.

Altogether the English setting seems to be a mistake. Aside from the injection of a few Anglicisms and British accents, the play is more American than anything else. The focal point of the second act, a supposedly immoral letter, does not seem so terribly bad, and the author's obvious switch to English codes to support the validity of his characters' moral motivations, is a transparent device. Nor can the portrayels of intense emotion be palmed off as peculiarly English; they are poorly directed, and evoke very little. Sometimes they are ludicrous, and that adds to the evening's total of good fun at the Wilbur.