"HIS LADY FRIENDS."
The humours of the average farce are so elemental that in the matter of its
setting there is small need to worry about geographical or ethnical
considerations. Of course, if its _locale_ is French you may have to modify
its freedom of thought and speech, but with a very little accommodation to
national proprieties you can either transplant the setting of your play or
you can leave it where it was and make use of the convention that for stage
purposes all Frenchmen have a perfect command of our tongue and idiom. But
to take a frankly English novel by an English writer, adapt it, as Messrs.
NYITRAY and MANDEL have done, for the American stage with an American
setting, and then bring it over here and produce it with only one or two
actors in the whole cast to illustrate the purity of the American accent,
is perhaps to presume rather too much on our generous lack of intelligence.
However we have got Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY back again and that is what really
matters. As a philanderer protesting innocence in the face of damnatory
facts we know him well enough; but here we have him innocent and ingenuous
as an angel, yet hard put to it to convince anyone but himself of his
guilelessness. A millionaire (dollars) with a wife of economic disposition,
who declines to spend his money for him, he feels drawn to a course of
knight-errantry and rides abroad in search of damsels in pecuniary
distress, with the avowed object of "spreading a little sunshine."
[Illustration: "I want to spread a little sunshine."
_James Smith_ ... Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY.
_Eva Johns_ ... Miss JOAN BARRY.]
This quest, as you will easily understand, was not a very difficult one for
a man prepared to be imposed upon by just any adventuress, and in the
neighbourhood of his various business-branches, San Francisco, Washington,
Boston, he soon found a ready channel for the employment of his superfluous
wealth. The natural affection, however, which his generosity inspired was
not utilised by him, and you must try to believe that, in spite of the most
sinister appearances, he remained a faithful husband.
With the methods by which he appeased his wife's suspicions I will not
trouble you, partly because I could not follow them myself, owing to the
obscurity of the plot at its most critical moment. Enough that all ends
well with her firmly-expressed resolution that in the future she will
herself do all the necessary squandering.
Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY as _James Smith_ was irresistible in most of the old
ways and a few new ones. The play would have gone poorly without him, in
spite of the piquancy of Miss JOAN BARRY as a flapper, the fourth and final
recipient of his chaste bounty. Miss JESSIE BATEMAN as _Mrs. James Smith_
had no chance till just at the end with the turning of the worm. To the
part of _Lucille Early_--the _Earlys_, as a couple, were designed to
contrast with the _Smiths_, the wife in this case spending the money which
the husband hadn't got--Miss ATHENE SEYLER, who was meant for better
things, gave a certain distinction, but perhaps "pressed" a little too
much. Mr. JAMES CAREW, who played _Edward Early_, was conspicuous as the
sole male representative of the American language in this American play.
The fleeting visions that we had of Miss MONA HARRISON as a refractory and
venal cook excited general approval. The three _protegées_ of _James Smith_
were only faintly distinguishable in their rather crude banality.
The fun of the farce differed from that of most farces in depending less
upon situations than upon dialogue. The First Act, with the situations
still to come, was the best. I have not had the good fortune to read Miss
EDGINGTON'S novel, but one might be permitted to assume, from the
excellence of much of the wit, that, whatever the play may in other
respects have lacked of subtlety or refinement, such defect was no fault of
hers. What Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY himself thought of it all I cannot say, but
the play did not begin to compare, either for irony or singleness of
motive, with the last two in which he figured, _The Naughty Wife_ and _Home
and Beauty._ He clearly enjoyed his own part, but it was rather noticeable
that in his brief speech at the fall of the curtain he confined himself to
a personal acknowledgment of the public's sympathy with him in his illness
and their loyalty throughout his career, and made no reference to the play
or its authors.