Summary

A one-act play of the social-ralism model.

Glamour is set in a park. A lonely, plain girl, Mildred Woodward, sits on a park bench crocheting so that she does not have to engage with people or for her, her terrifying surroundings. She is waiting for her attractive sister Angela who, we learn, had been raped and the rapist was not apprehended. A young man Ray Whiteley (a wordplay on white-washing or a veneer) forces his attentions on Mildred. Ray's story is that he is an actor. He is in fact the ultimate "actor" for his make-up box is a rapist prop, but the audience is not given any reason to suspect that at first, though the dialogue between Ray and Mildred does begin to build suspense and fear for Mildred's safety. The makeup prop is vital to the characterization of Mildred and shows how well Naish understood the socialization of women to believe that the only thing that was important about them was how they look. Whiteley hides his rapist intentions under his apparent wish to bring Mildred out of herself and make her happy. He takes flight when he sees Angela and her companion, Rudy Thessalow, approach, for she is one of his earlier rape victims and he knows that she will recognize him if he hangs around.

Like most of Naish's social-realism plays this play is bleak, not only because of Ray's deceptiveness and predatory nature, but also because of the portrait of Millie's loneliness, her need for and love of Angela, and Angela's carelessness towards her. An effective device in this play are the non-speaking characters moving across the set for most of the action.

Naish employs the device of a play within a play where Ray produces a script for a play in which he purports he is playing the part of a John Cronin, a man who steals his best friend's wife. He gets Mildred to read the part of Stella, the unfaithful wife.