"UNCLE NED."
As the final curtain fell on the Fourth Act there was talk of celebrating
the conversion of the villain in a bottle of the best (1906). But this did
not mean that the good wine of the play had been kept to the end. Indeed it
had been practically exhausted about the middle of the Third Act, and the
rest was barley-water, sweet but relatively insipid. So long as Mr. HENRY
AINLEY was just allowed to sparkle, with beaded bubbles winking all round
the brim of him, everything went well and more than well; the trouble began
when the author, Mr. DOUGLAS MURRAY, remembered that no British audience
would be contented with mere irresponsible badinage, however fresh and
delicate; that somehow he must provide an ending where virtue prevailed and
sentiment was satisfied.
So, when _Uncle Ned's_ humour had failed to move the brutal egoism of his
brother, beating upon it like the lightest of sea-foam on a rock of basalt,
he was made to fall back upon the alternative of heavy denunciation. And it
was significant that this commonplace tirade drew more applause than all
the pretty wit that had gone before it. Seldom have I been so profoundly
impressed with the difficulties of an art which depends for its success
(financial, that is to say) on the satisfaction of tastes that have nothing
in common beyond the crudest elements of human nature.
Mr. AINLEY had things all his own way. Between him, the romancer of the
light heart and the free fancy, and his brother, the millionaire tradesman
of the tough hide, there was the clash of temperaments but never the clash
of intellects. ("Nobody with a sense of humour," says _Uncle Ned_, "ever
made a million pounds.") That the man with the iron will should be beaten
at the last with his own weapons, and brought to see the lifelong error of
his ways by a violent philippic that must have surprised the speaker hardly
less than his audience, was the most incredible thing in the play. Indeed
the author was reduced to showing us the results of the bad man's change of
heart and leaving us to imagine the processes, these being worked out in
the interval between two Acts by means of a fortnight's physical collapse,
from which he emerges unrecognisably reformed.
I cannot praise too warmly the delightfully fantastic and inconsequent
humour of the first half of the play. Often it was the things that Mr.
AINLEY was given to say; but even more often, I think, it was the
incomparable way he said them, with those astonishingly swift and
unforeseen turns of gesture and glance and movement which are his peculiar
gift. Now and then, to remind us of his versatility, he may turn to
sentiment or even tragedy, but light comedy remains his natural _metier_.
If I have a complaint to make it is that _Uncle Ned's_ studied refusal to
understand from an intimate woman-friend why it was that his elder niece,
who had been privily married, "could no longer hide her secret" (the
reticence of his friend was the sort of silly thing that you get in books
and plays, but never in life) was perhaps a little wanton and caused
needless embarrassment both to the young wife and to us. And one need not
be very squeamish to feel that it was a pity to put into the lips of a mere
child, a younger sister, the rather precocious comment that she makes on
the inconvenience of a secret marriage. The humour of the play was too good
to need assistance from this sort of titillation.
[Illustration: _Sir Robert Graham_ (_Mr. RANDLE AYRTON_). "MAKE YOURSELF AT
HOME. DON'T MIND ME."
_Edward Graham_ (_Mr. HENRY AINLEY_). "I DON'T."]
Mr. RANDLE AYRTON, as the plutocratic pachyderm, kept up his thankless end
with a fine imperviousness; and Miss IRENE ROOKE, in the part of his
secretary, played, as always, with a very gracious serenity, though I wish
this charming actress would pronounce her words with not quite so nice a
precision. Miss EDNA BEST was an admirable flapper, with just the right
note of _gaucherie_.
As _Mears_, Mr. CLAUDE RAINS was not to be hampered by the methods dear to
the detective of convention; he looked like an apache and behaved, rather
effectively, like nothing in particular.
The _Dawkins_ of Mr. G. W. ANSON knew well the first duty of a
stage-butler, to keep coming on whenever a stop-gap is wanted; but he had
also great personal qualities, to say nothing of his astounding record of
forty years' service in a house where strong liquor was only permitted for
"medicinal" purposes.