"THE DRAGON."
Some day, no doubt, plays like _Mr. Wu_ and _The Dragon_ (by R. E.
JEFFREY) will be forbidden by the League of Nations. Meanwhile let us
allow ourselves to be diverted by the motiveless villainies of crooked
cruel "Chinks" like _Wang Fu Chang_, who sold opium at a terrific
profit in Mayfair, hung his servants up by their thumbs and belonged
to a Society of Elder Brethren, as to whose activities we were given
no clue, unless indeed their job was the kidnapping of Younger Sisters
for Wicked Mandarins.
For _Jack Stacey_, who opened the Prologue in Loolong with head in
hands and moaned invocations of the Deity (a version doubtless of
the well-known gambit, "'Hell!' said the Duchess"), had his little
daughter kidnapped at birth or thereabouts (by _Wang Fu_, as it
happened), and never saw her again till, after eighteen years of
opium-doping--between the Prologue and the First Act--he called upon
the same _Wang Fu_ (just before dinner) with a peremptory message from
a very bad and powerful mandarin that if little Miss _Che Fu_ were not
packed off to China by eleven that same evening the Elder Brethren
would be one short by midnight. _Che Fu_, I ought to say, passed as
_Wang's_ daughter, but was so English, you know, to look at that
nobody could really believe it.
Of course _Jack_ didn't recognise her as his own daughter, but equally
of course we did, and knew that she would be rescued by her impetuous
boy-lover and restored to her real father; but not before great
business with opium pipes, pivoting statues of goddesses, inoperative
revolvers, gongs, strangulations (with gurgles), detectives, rows of
Chinese servants each more rascally (and less Chinese, if possible)
than the last, and over all the polished villainy of the inscrutable
_Wang Fu Chang_.
Mr. JEFFREY'S technique was quite adequate for this ingenuous kind of
thing. He achieved what I take to be the supreme compliment of noisy
hushings sibilated from the pit and gallery when the later curtains
rose. Perhaps action halted a little to allow of rather too much
display of pidgin-English and (I suppose) authentic elementary Chinese
and comic reliefs which filled the spaces between the salient episodes
of the slender and naive plot. I couldn't help wondering how _Jack
Stacey_, whom we left at 10.45 in a horrible stupor, shut away in a
gilded alcove of _Wang Fu's_ opium den, could appear at 11.30 at _Lady
Handley's_ in immaculate evening dress and with entirely unruffled
hair, having in the meantime cut down and restored to consciousness
two tortured Chinese and heard the true story of his daughter's
adventures. This seems to be overdoing the unities. And I wondered
whether the puzzled look on young _Handley's_ face was due to this
same wonder or to the reflection that if he had shed one undesirable
father-in-law he had let himself in for another. For, needless to say,
they had all met in the famous opium scene when _Stacey_ was naturally
not at his best.
Mr. D. LEWIN MANNERING was suitably sinister as _Wang Fu_; Mr. TARVER
PENNA'S _Ah Fong_, the heroine's champion, made some very pleasant
faces and gestures and was less incurably Western than some of his
colleagues; Mr. CRONIN WILSON'S _Jack Stacey_ seemed a meritorious
performance. The part of _Che Fu_ made no particular demand on Miss
CHRISTINE SILVER'S talent, and Miss EVADNE PRICE faithfully earned
the laughter she was expected to make as _Sua Se_, the opium-den
attendant. Leave your critical faculty at home and you will be able to
derive considerable entertainment from this unambitious show.