Yvonne Arnaud (1892-1958)

"The Girl in the Taxi"
Produced at The Lyric Theatre, London.
Review from Lloyds Weekly News (London) - 12th September, 1908.

In its German original, as well as in its American translation, "The Girl in the Taxi" has been a tremendous success as a farcical comedy without music. Now, in London, it is in for a record run - it cannot help but have it - as a musical comedy.

Notwithstanding a somewhat ancient "main idea," the new production, at the Lyric is quite the brightest thing of its kind since "The Merry Widow." The characters, maybe, are old friends, every one of them, and the plot is certainly as obvious from the first as an elephant. When the gay Baron Dauvray, a monument of superfine morals in his own home, shares a taxi with a young lady to the restaurant Jeunesse Doree, and there takes supper with her, it is plain to everybody in the auditorium that everybody on the stage will meet him there - even his own daughter, whose fiance has brought her to the place merely to show it to her as one of the sights of Paris. There, too, he meets his supposed namby-pamby son, who in his turn meets the husband of the lady he is escorting. But, in spite of all this stock farcical comedy incident, the piece seems to be full of freshness and originality.

It is because everyone concerned in it is so fresh and so original - and so clever. The dialogue, as well, is deliciously fresh and crisp, and the lyrics of Mr. Arthur Wimperis, who is responsible, with Mr. Frederick Fenn, for the English "book" are even more sparkling than his "Arcadians" work.

Mr. Arthur Playfair as the Baron, Mr. C. H. Workman as the old husband of Suzanne (the leading female character, yet not the "Girl" of the title), and Mr. Frederick Volpe as the head waiter at the Jeunesse Doree, are all most richly humorous, and as Suzanne Miss Yvonne Arnaud is as clever as her ways are charming and her voice is beautiful. A few weeks ago Miss Arnaud, who is French, was in the chorus of the Adelphi. To-day she is a "star" of the first musical comedy magnitude.