With the collaboration of Basil Dean, Graham Greene has transformed his novel into an extremely affecting play. Mr. Greene tells a story of Catholic sin and anguish with supreme artistry: he is a master of dialogue and characterization, and, what is more, he blends philosophic ideas and drama with great success. Rogers and Hammerstein, the producers, and Basil Dean, the director, have afforded this adaptation a very skillful production.

"The Heart of the Matter" begins with a scene showing the strains in the marriage of an out-of-love, middle-aged couple. For fifteen years Major Scobie has served the British government as deputy commissioner of police in West Africa with unenthused satisfaction in his work. His literary wife has disliked every year of it. When it is finally arranged for her to travel for a rest, the major falls in love with a young war widow who becomes helplessly dependent on him. He had hitherto been only a perfunctory Catholic and thus avoids the problem of his sin until the issue is forced by the return of his wife and the anticipation of their customary joint confession. He manages, however, to confess to the priest alone, but will not repent. The major is torn between Catholic judgement, in which he believes, and another morality which will not allow him to hurt either his wife or his mistress. ("I cannot love God at the expense of one of his creatures.") His solution of suicide is made with this set of values. He kills himself to avoid rejecting either woman--"Nobody wants the dead"--with the expectation that he will be denied eternal life. But the play ends with the priest's reflection that "The church knows all the rules, but it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."

Mr. Greene has not used the theater as a soapbox. He has successfully presented a complex problem without long, impassioned speeches; his dialogue is terse and understated. Voices are raised only four or five times during the evening. And time is taken to give a complete picture of the characters' lives. This leisure may annoy those theatre-goers who expect rapid exposition and geometric relevance of every line to the ultimate "point" of the play. But the play would be much less powerful if it were otherwise. For example, it is important that the emptiness of the major's marriage be established early as a contrast to later happenings--and that requires time.

The acting corresponds to the emotional economy of the script. Ian Hunter and Alison Leggatt are perfectly cast as the major and his wife. They act with simplicity and poignant reserve. Rosalie Crutchley lends vitality to the generally quiet production as the distraught war-wife; in addition, she is very beautiful. And Peter Illing plays excellently the role of the oily Syrian merchant who serves both as the protagonist of the plot and as a moral foil to the major.