"The Mayor of Troy."
The admirable "Q" has shot his arrow into the gold so often and carried off so mountainous a load of trophies that he can see with equanimity his last shot signalled an outer—even a miss. The signaller must needs be more dismayed than he. "Q" is also too honest and perceptive a critic not to see the weak points of The Mayor of Troy as a stage play, though he may fairly plume himself on the pleasant (and unpleasant) folk of his creation who partly came to life on the opening night at the Haymarket. He will have found out and noted for an appendix to those lively and instructive discourses of his On the Art of Writing that it is a jolly difficult thing to write a play; that an act is not a chapter of a novel, still less a compôte of bits of many chapters; that, while to be charmingly discursive is a paramount quality of the higher type of novelist, the same attribute in a play, whose very breath of life is essential brevity, makes it appear to go on crutches, like his own discomfited hero. It bemuses an audience and gravels the players—as the queer uncertainty of touch of so skilful, so conscientious an actor as Mr. Ainley sufficiently betrayed. But to the story.
CURED OF OBESITY IN TEN YEARS.
The Mayor of Troy (Mr. Henry Ainley) before and after prison diet.
Portly and pompous Major Solomon Hymen Toogood (Mr. Ainley), wealthy citizen of Troy Town, and, in the perilous year of grace 1804, for the seventh time its Mayor; Justice of the Peace, in command of the battery of Diehards which himself had raised, spoilt by the worship of the women and the tractability (with reservations) of the men, has reason to be mightily pleased with himself; and very distinctly is. On this pleasant day on which the play opens he has written a proposal of marriage to a lady whose heart, unhappily, is already given to his Deputy in civic office and Second in Command of the battery, Dr. Dillworthy (Mr. Leon Quartermaine). Meanwhile a little smuggling expedition, which he had planned under cover of his military authority (Sir Arthur does not quite put it like that), turns into a genuine fight, and our Mayor is carried off prisoner to France.
At the peace of 1814 he returns thin and lame to find that the lady of his choice has long married the man of hers (and why not?), and that the two, with their children, are installed in his house; Dillworthy no longer Deputy but reigning Mayor. Nobody recognises the famous Toogood, which is entirely "Q's" fault, not theirs; and nobody, except a pretty maid who is to marry his nephew (his own money has made the match possible), seems to worry overmuch (absit omen!) about returned prisoners of war. He reveals himself to nobody but his villain brother William (Mr. Ayrton). That fatuous revenue officer, Lomax (Mr. Malleson), has written a fulsomely flattering life of him at which his gorge rises. Everybody, apart from opening a hospital in his memory (in a bed of which he eventually finds himself), seems to be going about his or her business much as usual (yet what else could they do?). He extracts a character of himself from his faithful old servant and finds it not so flattering as he would have liked. Seems, in fact, determined to have his grievance. Well, then, he will buy a dog. And he will take the road with his pal the comic sailor and shake the dust of fickle Troy from off his feet.
But I protest that this is all very unfair to the Trojans. As soon as he gave them their chance they took it decently enough, so much so that all ended happily in what must have been a most uncomfortable dance on the sharp fragments of the Toogood bust which the disgruntled original had smashed with his crutch.
Of course poor William very naturally resented this extraordinarily inconsiderate return from the dead of a long and well-lost brother, several thousand of whose pounds he had misappropriated. As for Lomax, could he by any stretch of the imagination within the frame of this picture have tried to bribe the Mayor to go away just to save his infernal biography from being wasted? You simply can't have a convincing colloquy on these lines between the tragic figure of the disillusioned and embittered hero and this farcical jackanapes.
And I think it was just this sort of lack of conviction that flattened the actors. Mr. Henry Ainley had his moments, but he's not a man of moments. He's about our best whole-hogger. Mr. Leon Quartermaine's easy skill was, as it always is, a very pleasant thing to watch. Mr. De Lange gave an animated little sketch of a droll French spy. Mr. Miles Malleson shouldn't let his sense of character and his undoubted talent for business lead him into that capital sin of taking more than his share of the stage. Mr. Hendrie as the sailor, Ben Chope, gave us another of those amusing grotesques of his; and Miss Claire Greet put in a clever paragraph as Mrs. Chope. Mr. Frederick Groves was an excellent gruff servant; Miss Peggy Rush a pretty bride; Mr. Gerald McCarthy a plausible lover; Miss Bruce-Potter a becomingly subdued and adoring Georgian doctor's wife. Mr. Lyall Swete played competently a poisonous ass of a vicar, and was responsible for the production, which was admirable.
T.