"THE ROMANTIC AGE."
I HOPE that Mr. ALAN MILNE is a good enough critic to agree with me in
thinking that this is the best play he has so far given us. Not that the
idea of it is as new as that of his _Mr. Pim_ or his _Wurzel-Flummery_,
but because, without sacrificing his lightness of touch and his sense of
fun, he has, for the first time, produced a serious scheme.
People will tell you that his Second Act was the weak spot in the play;
that the others were brilliant, but that this one, for its first half,
was tedious and delayed the action. They will say this because they are
familiar with A. A. M.'s humour, but not with his sentiment. Yet it was
in this middle Act that he gave us the best passage of all, in
presenting the philosophy of his pedlar, which had in it something of
the dewy freshness of the early morning scene in the wood ("morning's at
seven," as _Pippa_--not _Mr. Pim_--said _en passant_). There was no real
delay in the action here, for the pedlar was providing the hero with the
argument without which he could never have persuaded the lady to yield;
could never have made her understand that Romance is not confined to the
trunk-and-hose period, or any age, so named, of chivalry, but is to be
found wherever there is a true companionship of hearts. Unfortunately
the effect of this passage was a little spoilt by what had just gone
before--a rather slow and superfluous scene with the village idiot--and
some of the audience imagined that the author was still marking time.
Mr. MILNE has an individual manner so distinct that he can well afford
to acknowledge his debt to Sir JAMES BARRIE. As in _Mary Rose_, so here
(though there are no supernatural forces at work) we have the sharp
contrast between commonplace life, as lived by the rest, and the life of
Fairyland, as coming within the vision of one only. And we were reminded
too of the Midsummer-madness that overtook the company in _Dear Brutus_.
I won't say that it wasn't natural enough for _Melisande_, under the
fascination of a moonlit Midsummer Eve, to imagine, when she chanced
upon a gentleman in fancy dress of the right period, that at last she
had realised her dream of a hero of romance; but she was stark
Midsummer-mad to suppose, when she met him early next morning with his
costume unchanged, that he would keep it on till he came to tea with the
family, and then, still wearing it, waft her off to Faerie.
But not even BARRIE has ever made a better scene than that which showed
us the disillusionment of the visionary when she is confronted with her
blue-and-gold hero of romance now transformed into a plain Stock
Exchange man, his air of banality enhanced by the last word in golf
suitings. The humour of this scene, in which she made conventional
conversation without any real effort to conceal her sense of the bathos
of the situation, was very perfect. The relatively simple humour of the
match-making mother--not so simple, all the same, as its spontaneity
made it appear--had the distinction which one expects of Mr. MILNE; but
this was far the funniest feature in the play.
It would have been an easy matter to make cheap fun, as MARK TWAIN did
in _A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur_, out of the popular view of
the Age of Romance, but A. A. M. avoided that obvious lure. Indeed, in
his natural anxiety not to be taken too seriously in his first attempt
to be serious, he rather tended to make light of his own theory of
modern romance, laying a little too much stress at the end on the
culinary aspect of conjugal felicity.
I am not sure that Mr. ARTHUR WONTNER (to whom my best wishes for his
new managership) quite realised, in his doublet and long hose, my idea
of a figure of mediaeval romance. In fact I am free to confess that I
disagreed with _Melisande_ and preferred him in his golf-clothes. But
perhaps that was part of the idea, and Mr. MILNE meant me to feel like
that. Miss BARBARA HOFFE'S _Melisande_--a difficult part, because she
was the only other-worldly person in the play and the only one in
desperate earnest--was very cleverly handled. In her most exalted
moments of poetic rapture she was never too precious, and when called
upon for a touch of corrective humour was quick to respond.
Miss LOTTIE VENNE laid herself out in her inimitable way for a broad
interpretation of the visionary's very earthly mother; indeed once or
twice she almost laid herself out of the picture; but she still remained
irresistible. As a pair of light-hearted young lovers Miss DOROTHY
TETLEY and Mr. JOHN WILLIAMS played really well in parts that were not
nearly so easy as they looked. And there was the dry humour of Mr.
BROMLEY-DAVENPORT, as the father (I fear he must have missed the romance
of twin souls) and the open-air charm of Mr. NICHOLSON'S performance as
_Gentleman Susan_, the pedlar. In a word, my grateful compliments
embrace as good a cast as ever caught--and held--the spirit of an
author.
"PRISCILLA AND THE PROFLIGATE."
When you have been jilted by _Cynthia_ at the church-door and, two days
afterwards, in a fit of pique marry _Priscilla_ at sight (of course you
can't always get a _Priscilla_ to consent to this arrangement; but _Mr.
Bensley Stuart Gore_ had a young ward at school who wanted her freedom;
so that was all right), you may think to persuade the Faithless One that
you have given solid proof of your indifference to her. But you mustn't
dash off to Africa an hour after your wedding with the declared
intention of being eaten by wild men or wilder beasts, because, if you
do that, you give your scheme away and _Cynthia_ will have the
satisfaction of knowing that she has driven you to desperate courses.
Yet that is what _Mr. Bensley Stuart Gore_ did (he was the "Profligate"
of the title, though he never gave any noticeable sign of profligacy).
After this strain on my credulity I felt prepared for anything, and was
not in the least surprised to find him, six years older and still
intact, on the terrace of the Hotel Casa Bellini, by the dear old shores
of Lake Maggiore, which, as the programme advised me, is in Italy. It
seemed, too, the most natural thing in the world that the author, Miss
LAURA WILDIG, should have collected _Priscilla_ and _Cynthia_ (the
latter in tow of a third-rate millionaire husband whom she loathed) at
the same address.
It was at this juncture that _Mr. Bensley Stuart Gore_ was inspired
with a Great Thought. In order to set _Priscilla_ free (I ought to say
that he hadn't recognised her) he would elope with _Cynthia_. How
_Priscilla_ set out to frustrate this noble sacrifice and secure her
husband for herself; how she bribed the caretaker to lock him up with
her in the "Bloody Turret" of an adjacent ruin; how subsequently, at 2
A.M., in the public lounge of the hotel, she tried to work upon his
emotions by appearing in a black night-dress (surely this rather vulgar
form of allurement is _demode_ by now even in the suburbs, or, anyhow,
is not so freshly daring as she seemed to think it), I will leave you to
imagine. Even Miss IRIS HOEY'S nice soft voice and pleasant _calineries_
could not quite carry off this rather machine-made trifle. If anything
saved it, it was the acting of Mr. FRANK DENTON as _Jimmy Forde_.
Starting as _Bensley's_ "best man," he missed the wedding ceremony
through going to the wrong church, but after that he stuck close to his
friend for the remainder of the plot, and greatly endeared himself to
the audience by the excellent way in which he played the silly ass.
As for _Bensley_ himself, you might have thought that he had a
sufficiently chequered career, yet Mr. CYRIL RAYMOND got very little
colour out of the part. For the rest, Mr. H. DE LANGE, as the
millionaire, got a certain amount out of the subject of his wife's
indigestion, which was a sort of _leit-motif_ with him; but most of the
colour seemed to have gone into the scenery, admirably designed and
painted by Mr. MCCLEERY and Mr. WALTER HANN.