"The Mayor of Troy."
The admirable "Q" has shot his arrow into the gold so often and carried
off so mountainous a load of trophies that he can see with equanimity
his last shot signalled an outer--even a miss. The signaller must needs
be more dismayed than he. "Q" is also too honest and perceptive a critic
not to see the weak points of _The Mayor of Troy_ as a stage play,
though he may fairly plume himself on the pleasant (and unpleasant) folk
of his creation who partly came to life on the opening night at the
Haymarket. He will have found out and noted for an appendix to those
lively and instructive discourses of his _On the Art of Writing_ that it
is a jolly difficult thing to write a play; that an act is not a chapter
of a novel, still less a _compôte_ of bits of many chapters; that, while
to be charmingly discursive is a paramount quality of the higher type of
novelist, the same attribute in a play, whose very breath of life is
essential brevity, makes it appear to go on crutches, like his own
discomfited hero. It bemuses an audience and gravels the players--as the
queer uncertainty of touch of so skilful, so conscientious an actor as
Mr. AINLEY sufficiently betrayed. But to the story.
[Illustration: CURED OF OBESITY IN TEN YEARS.
_The Mayor of Troy (Mr. Henry Ainley) before and after prison diet._]
Portly and pompous _Major Solomon Hymen Toogood_ (Mr. AINLEY), wealthy
citizen of Troy Town, and, in the perilous year of grace 1804, for the
seventh time its Mayor; Justice of the Peace, in command of the battery
of _Diehards_ which himself had raised, spoilt by the worship of the
women and the tractability (with reservations) of the men, has reason to
be mightily pleased with himself; and very distinctly is. On this
pleasant day on which the play opens he has written a proposal of
marriage to a lady whose heart, unhappily, is already given to his
Deputy in civic office and Second in Command of the battery, Dr.
_Dillworthy_ (Mr. LEON QUARTERMAINE). Meanwhile a little smuggling
expedition, which he had planned under cover of his military authority
(Sir ARTHUR does not quite put it like that), turns into a genuine
fight, and our Mayor is carried off prisoner to France.
At the peace of 1814 he returns thin and lame to find that the lady of
his choice has long married the man of hers (and why not?), and that the
two, with their children, are installed in his house; _Dillworthy_ no
longer Deputy but reigning Mayor. Nobody recognises the famous
_Toogood_, which is entirely "Q's" fault, not theirs; and nobody, except
a pretty maid who is to marry his nephew (his own money has made the
match possible), seems to worry overmuch (_absit omen_!) about returned
prisoners of war. He reveals himself to nobody but his villain brother
_William_ (Mr. AYRTON). That fatuous revenue officer, _Lomax_ (Mr.
MALLESON), has written a fulsomely flattering life of him at which his
gorge rises. Everybody, apart from opening a hospital in his memory (in
a bed of which he eventually finds himself), seems to be going about his
or her business much as usual (yet what else could they do?). He
extracts a character of himself from his faithful old servant and finds
it not so flattering as he would have liked. Seems, in fact, determined
to have his grievance. Well, then, he will buy a dog. And he will take
the road with his pal the comic sailor and shake the dust of fickle Troy
from off his feet.
But I protest that this is all very unfair to the Trojans. As soon as he
gave them their chance they took it decently enough, so much so that all
ended happily in what must have been a most uncomfortable dance on the
sharp fragments of the _Toogood_ bust which the disgruntled original had
smashed with his crutch.
Of course poor _William_ very naturally resented this extraordinarily
inconsiderate return from the dead of a long and well-lost brother,
several thousand of whose pounds he had misappropriated. As for _Lomax_,
could he by any stretch of the imagination within the frame of this
picture have tried to bribe the Mayor to go away just to save his
infernal biography from being wasted? You simply can't have a convincing
colloquy on these lines between the tragic figure of the disillusioned
and embittered hero and this farcical jackanapes.
And I think it was just this sort of lack of conviction that flattened
the actors. Mr. HENRY AINLEY had his moments, but he's not a man of
moments. He's about our best _whole-hogger_. Mr. LEON QUARTERMAINE'S
easy skill was, as it always is, a very pleasant thing to watch. Mr. DE
LANGE gave an animated little sketch of a droll French spy. Mr. MILES
MALLESON shouldn't let his sense of character and his undoubted talent
for business lead him into that capital sin of taking more than his
share of the stage. Mr. HENDRIE as the sailor, _Ben Chope_, gave us
another of those amusing grotesques of his; and Miss CLAIRE GREET put in
a clever paragraph as _Mrs. Chope_. Mr. FREDERICK GROVES was an
excellent gruff servant; Miss PEGGY RUSH a pretty bride; Mr. GERALD
MCCARTHY a plausible lover; Miss BRUCE-POTTER a becomingly subdued and
adoring Georgian doctor's wife. Mr. LYALL SWETE played competently a
poisonous ass of a vicar, and was responsible for the production, which
was admirable.