"THE HOUSE OF PERIL."
The maker of a plot that turns upon murder and drugging in the
neighbourhood of a Continental gambling haunt must be aware that his
work is not going to be brought to the test of common experience, and
he is therefore less likely to be hampered by the laws of probability.
But there are limits even to the British public's gift of credulity.
How far Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES may have enjoyed special privileges in the
search for her material I cannot say; but for myself I confess that a
modest acquaintance with the atmosphere of European casinos has left
me in absolute ignorance of any such society as that of the hosts
of The House of Peril. Perhaps Mrs. LOWNDES'S book (which I have not
read) may throw light on this dark mystery; but in the play--and the
play's the only thing that concerns us here--I could trace nothing
to indicate to my poor intelligence how it was that two decently-bred
ladies and their escort, a perfectly honest French officer, ever came
to find themselves on terms of easy intercourse with the frowsy old
German couple who lived at the Chalet des Muguets, Lacville, on the
proceeds of robbery.
Any obstacle which these repellent Teutons may have had to overcome in
the ultimate execution of their nefarious designs must have been the
merest child's-play compared with the initial difficulty of inducing
the right kind of victim to penetrate so fifth-rate an interior. One
never even began to get over the inherent improbability of such an
attraction.
And I was the less disposed to take things for granted because of the
rather irritating obscurity that veiled the opening of the Second Act,
in which we are introduced to The House of Peril and are left for a
long time in doubt as to the nature of the place and its relation to
anything that has gone before. I think this must have been the fault
of the adapter, Mr. VACHELL. He seems to have assumed in his audience
a general knowledge of the original story--dangerous confidence, even
in the case of so clever and popular a writer as Mrs. BELLOC LOWNDES.
It certainly was his fault that the end of the play was like nothing
ever seen off the stage. Let me briefly put the scene before you. A
young Englishwoman, paying a farewell call upon the criminals of The
House of Peril, has been drugged by them. She wakes up prematurely to
find them collecting her pearl necklace--four thousand pounds' worth
of it. Murder is in the air, when suddenly, to the surprise of
the villains (but not to ours, for we had had fair warning of the
_dénouement_), enter to the rescue two admirers of the lady. In the
excitement attendant upon her recovery from a swoon the druggists
are suffered to pass out through the door into the arms of a posse of
constabulary.
At this juncture, the lady having been restored to her senses, you
might suppose that the rescue-party would take at least some fleeting
interest in the disposal of their prisoners. There you would be in
error. The final curtain is due and there are peremptory affairs of
the heart to be wound up before we can get away. So, to clear the
ground, one of the admirers makes a gallant statement which redeems
the other's character from a false suspicion, and, rightly regarding
himself as _de trop_, goes off by another exit and shows no further
concern in either of the two developments--on or off the stage.
The remaining admirer, left alone in the company of the lady, ignores
with a fine detachment the impotent rage that his captives are
presumably venting in the passage just outside, and declares the
ardour of his passion as a man might do in the breathless calm of
a moonlit solitude _à deux_. And on this idyllic scene the curtain
descends.
[Illustration: "PAP-PA" AND "POOSY-CAT."
_Wachner_ . . . . . MR. NORMAN MCKINNEL.
_Madame Wachner_ . . MISS ANNIE SCHLETTER.]
The most satisfying thing in the play was the acting of Miss ANNIE
SCHLETTER as "_Madame" Wachner_ of the Chalet des Muguets, an
extraordinarily clever study of the doting _Hausfrau,_ much busied
about the service of her lord. Mr. NORMAN MCKINNEL as _Wachner_ easily
contrived to convey the typically Teuton blend of brutishness, and
domestic sentimentality, combined with the heavy playfulness which by
a curious delusion, ineradicably racial, is mistaken over there for
humour. "Ja, ja," he says complacently, "I have the humour-sense."
It was regrettable that the cosmopolitan _Anna Wolsky,_ acted with
great animation by Miss MARGARET HALSTAN, had to withdraw from the
scene at an early stage in consequence of being murdered--I don't
know how, as we neither saw nor heard the details. Her friend, _Sylvia
Bailey_, however, stayed on to the finish, and Miss EMILY BROOKE saw
her nicely through her troubles. A very level performance.
[Illustration: "CHARGE, CHESTER--CHARGE!"
_Count Paul de Virieu_ . . . MR. OWEN NARES.
_William Chester_ . . . . . MR. JOHN HOWELL.]
To the rather wooden part of _William Chester_ (foil to hero) Mr. JOHN
HOWELL brought a certain unliveliness of his own. A better chance was
taken by Miss STELLA RHO, who gave proof of a vivid personality in
her brief sketch of a professional fortune-teller who admitted to her
clients (this must be very unusual) that she nearly always made a mess
of her crystal-gazing.
Finally, Mr. OWEN NARES, looking pretty and not too warlike in the gay
uniform of a French Officer of Cavalry, played the hero's part with a
very natural and fluent charm. I join in the general hope that this,
the first play under his actor-management, will go well. It ought to,
for though, in point of power to thrill, it did not quite confirm the
promise of its sinister name and theme it was never for a moment dull,
and its faults were the kind of stage-faults about which, while they
give the critic a chance of being unkind, a British audience never
worries too much.