"THE DAISY."
I imagine that the authors who founded this play on a Hungarian
original regarded it as an ambitious piece of work. If so, they were
right in the sense that they have attempted something very much beyond
their powers. In the view of the gentleman who addressed us at the
fall of the curtain (I understand that he was one of the authors) it
offered magnificent opportunities (I think "magnificent" was the word)
for the brilliant gifts of two of the actors. Certainly it covered a
good bit of ground, what with this world and the next; for it started
with roundabouts on the Heath, and got as far away as the Judgment Day
(Hungarian style?)--and fourteen years after.
I may have a contemptibly weak stomach for this kind of thing, but I
confess that I don't care much for a representation of the Judgment
Day in a melodrama of low life. Of course low life has just as much
right as any other sort of life to be represented in a Judgment
Day scene; but it ought to behave itself there and not introduce
back-chat.
I should explain that it was a special Suicide Court, and that the
object of _The Magister_, as the Presiding Judge was named in the
programme, was to inquire into the record of the delinquent and, if
his answers were satisfactory, to allow him to revisit the scenes of
his earthly life in order to repair any little omissions that he might
have made in the hurry of departure. Unfortunately the leading case
was a bad example of suicide. It had not been deliberate; he had
simply killed himself impromptu in a tight corner to avoid arrest for
intended murder.
Worse still, when he returned to earth after a lapse of fourteen
years' purgatory (between the sixth and seventh scenes), for his
record was a rotten one and he had shown no signs of penitence, the
_revenant_ made very poor use of his hour. Returning to his wife whom
he had brutalised, he found that she had taught their girl-child to
regard him as a paragon of virtue, and most of his limited time was
spent in correcting this beautiful legend. You see, at the time of his
death he had had no chance of making the child realise how bad he was,
for the excellent reason that she had not yet been born, so he seized
this opportunity of making good that omission.
As a practical illustration of the kind of man he really had been, he
struck the child violently on the arm. We all saw him do it and we
all heard the smack, but the child assured us that she had not felt
anything. This I suppose was the author's way, ingenuous enough, of
reminding us that it was a case of spirit and not of flesh, whatever
our eyes and ears might persuade us to think of it.
Already in a previous scene there had been the same old difficulty.
While the man lay dead on his bed his spirit had been summoned by
a Higher Power (indicated in a peep-show), and his corpse sat up,
displacing the prostrate form of the widow, who had to take up a new
position, without however appearing to notice anything. It was still
sitting up when the curtain fell, and incidentally was caught in the
act of resuming its recumbent position when the curtain rose again for
the purpose of allowing the actors to receive our respectful plaudits.
Behind me I heard an American lady suggest that if they could somehow
distinguish the spirit from the body it would be better for our
illusions. To which her neighbour expressed the opinion that they
would eventually manage to do that feat. I await, less hopefully, this
development in stage mechanism. Meanwhile _Mary Rose_ has much to
answer for.
The play began promisingly enough with a scene full of colour and
humanity, of humour and pathos. We were among the roundabouts, whose
florid and buxom manageress, _Mrs. Muscat_ (admirably played by Miss
SUZANNE SHELDON), was having a quarrel of jealousy with her assistant
and late lover, "_The Daisy_," who had been seen taking notice of
Another. The dumb devotion of this child, _Julia_ (Miss MARY MERRALL),
who could never find words for her love--she said little beyond "Yuss"
and "I dunno"--was a very moving thing; and the patient stillness with
which she bore his subsequent brutality held us always under a strange
fascination.
[Illustration: "_The Daisy_" (_Mr. CAINE_). "WHAT MADE YOU TAKE A
FANCY TO ME?"
_Julia_ (_Miss MERRALL_). "I DUNNO."
(_Sympathetic appreciation of her ignorance on part of audience._)]
For the rest it was an ugly and sordid business, relieved only by the
coy confidences of the amorous _Maria_ (played by Miss GLADYS GORDON
with a nice sense of fun). Mr. HENRY CAINE, as "_The Daisy_,"
presented very effectively the rough-and-ready humour and the frank
brutality of his type; but he perhaps failed to convey the devastating
attractions which he was alleged to have for the frail sex; and his
sudden spasms of tragic emotion seemed a little out of the picture.
Apart from the painful crudity of the scene that was loosely described
as "The Other Side," the play abounded in amateurisms. For one thing
there was too much sermonising. It began with an obtrusive homily
on the part of an inspector of police, who went out of his way to
admonish _Julia_ about the danger of associating with "_The Daisy_."
Another instance was that of the bank-messenger, a person of such
self-possession and detachment that he contrived to deliver a moral
address while holding one foiled villain at the point of his revolver
and gripping the other's wrist as in a vice.
Nothing again could have been more naïve than the innocent home-coming
of the domestic carving-knive, freshly sharpened, from the grinder's
just in time to be diverted to the objects of a murderous enterprise.
Altogether, it was rather poor stuff, unworthy of the talent of many
of its interpreters and of the trouble that Miss EDITH CRAIG had spent
over its scenic effects. Perhaps the audience had been led to expect
too much, for "_The Daisy_," far from being the "wee, modest" flower
of ROBERT BURNS, had been at some pains to draw preliminary attention
to its merits.