"THE YELLOW TICKET."
If Mr. MICHAEL MORTON doesn't mind my not taking his original play too
seriously I don't mind telling him how much I enjoyed it. It is quite
a neat example of the shocker--an agreeable form of entertainment for
the simple and the jaded. The chief properties are a yellow ticket and
a hat-pin. Both belong to the innocent and beautiful Jewish heroine,
_Anna Mirol_.
It appears that she wanted to leave the pale to go to see her dying
father in Petersburg, and the police, who will have their grim
joke against a Jewess, offer her "the most powerful passport in
Russia"--the yellow ticket of Rahab. She accepts it desperately,
and, to escape its horrible obligations, enters an English family
as governess, under an assumed name. Here the head of the sinister
Okhrana (Secret Police Bureau), a sleek red-haired sensualist, _Baron
Stepan Andreyeff_, and a chivalrous but tactless English journalist,
_Julian Rolfe_, become acquainted with her. The latter wishes to marry
her; the former's intentions are strictly dishonourable, and with the
aid of his ubiquitous secret policemen he persecutes her, using his
power to set her free from the attentions of his detestable minions
for bargaining purposes in a perfectly Hunnish manner. Discreet
servants, locked doors, champagne, a perfectly priceless dressing
jacket, a sliding panel disclosing a luxuriously appointed
bedroom--all these resources are at his disposal.
But he reckons without her hatpin, which in the course of his
deplorably abrupt attempts at seduction she pushes adroitly into his
heart, and next day well-informed St. Petersburg winks discreetly
when it learns that the _Baron_ has died after an operation for
appendicitis.
How that nice young man, _Julian_, is more than a match for the
forthright methods of the Okhrana is for you to go and find out.
Mr. ALLAN AYNESWORTH'S finished skill was reinforced by a quite
admirable make-up, though only a policeman of very melodrama could
have missed that brilliant pate as it shone balefully over the
inadequate chair in which he sat concealed while his subordinate was
bullying the hapless _Anna_. Also I doubt whether so stout a ruffian
would have succumbed so promptly to such a simple pin-prick. But
perhaps the surprise, annoyance and keen disappointment broke his
soldierly heart. Anyway, living or dying, the _Baron_ was a clever and
plausible performance.
You know Mr. WONTNER'S loose-limbed ease of manner and agreeable
voice. He was rather a stock and stockish hero as he left the author's
hands, but Mr. WONTNER put life and feeling into him. Miss GLADYS
COOPER reached no heights or depths of passion, but took a pleasant
middle way, and certainly gets more out of herself than once seemed
likely. I should like to commend to her the excellent doctrine of the
"dominant mood." She was, for instance, just a little too detached in
the recital of that story when playing for time by the bad _Baron's_
fireside.
Mr. SYDNEY VALENTINE, having happily come by an early death in another
theatre, is able to present us a lifelike portrait of a really
remorseless policeman in our third Act, condemning folk to Siberia
with all the arbitrary despatch of the _Red Queen_.
On the whole, then, distinctly good of its kind--transpontine matter
with the St. James's form.