AT THE PLAY.
"Birds of a Feather."
It is nearly always a good thing for the author of a play to know what he is after, and if he can get his audience to follow him so much the better. It is quite possible that Mr. Esmond had an idea in his head when he wrote Birds of a Feather, but if so he never let me get at it. Up to the very end I had no conception of what he was trying to illustrate, unless it was the trite theory that we are the creatures of our environment.
That, at any rate, was how Constance (of "the House of Ussher") explained her vagaries, though I couldn't see why. The daughter of a very rich Jew, whose Christian wife had run away from him, she was brought up in great comfort, which included the love of a peer's son, her father's secretary. It is true that her stern parent would not hear of their union; but that has no doubt happened to young heiresses before now without turning them into criminals. With Constance however it seems to have been different. She had gathered from what she knew of her father's career that there must be easy ways of making money if you are not too scrupulous, so she forged his name for a thousand pounds with speculative intent. It was open to the old man to regard this as an act of filial piety, since it was an attempt, however crude, to follow the parental tradition; but apparently forgery had not been one of his foibles and he threatened her with the law unless she gave up the idea of marrying the secretary, now dismissed from his service.
Meanwhile she has been carrying on a secret intrigue with that gentleman (she must have got this from her "Christian" mother), and when her father comes to know of it he suddenly exhibits an unsuspected gift of sentimentality ("My baby Con! my baby Con!" he sobs), and, in terror lest his ewe-lamb's name should be tainted by the breath of scandal, he offers his late secretary a heavy sum of money to make an honest woman of her. It sounds a little inconsistent, but of course there may have been a nice differentiation in the old rogue's mind between a moral and a criminal offence, in favour of the latter.
As for Constance I have seldom met a less seizable character. If she was the result of environment there was no visible sign to show how it infected her. We simply had to take Mr. Esmond's word for it. To me the ménage seemed to be of the most respectable. But, of course, you can always attribute anything to your surroundings. One environment is vicious and so drives you to vice; another is virtuous with the same effect. Constance might condemn hers, but it never had a chance with a girl like that.
For myself it was not her viciousness that worried me, it was her vulgarity; and of this she seemed quite unconscious. Her speech abounded in second-rate colloquialisms. Was it her environment that taught her to say dreadful things like "Put that in your pipe and smoke it"? The cheap fun that she got out of a girl-friend who had made it a rule to pray for her was the kind of thing you would be sorry to find in a common boarding-school. And are gentlefolk in the habit of asking a man, as Constance did, how it was that he ever came to get engaged to such a woman as the one of his choice? In Bayswater it simply isn't done.
At the end of the First Act, after many trivialities and the waste of precious time over a description of certain characters that were presently to appear and endorse it, there was a sudden diversion. The professional card of a private detective was discovered in an arm-chair. No one seemed to know how it got there, and, as the curtain chose this moment to fall, we were left in a state of palpitation, wondering how we were to get through the interval with our curiosity unappeased. Ultimately it turned out that the detective was to be employed by Miss Ussher (aunt) to verify her suspicions with regard to the morals of Constance. But I shall never get you to believe me when I say that the subject was not so much as touched again till the final Act.
I have spoken of the incongruous stuff of which old Jacob Ussher's heart was constructed. That strange organ was hard enough to make him give his daughter away to his secretary in the matter of the forgery; but when it came to a question of the exposure of her relations with her lover this same heart was found to be of the consistency of putty.
I hope I shall not seem guilty of Constance's indiscretion if I politely wonder how it was that so astute a judge as Miss Marie Löhr accepted this play. Actor-managers, of course, have been known to produce indifferent work for the sake of a good acting part for themselves. If that was her motive I think she must have imagined a fine subtlety in a character which was difficult only because it was loosely conceived. If she failed to make it plausible it was not for want of very adroit handling.
In Jacob Ussher Mr. Esmond gave himself a most congenial part, in which he easily surpassed his achievement as author. Mr. Tozer as a slum-parson was extremely probable with his quiet sincerity. But our chief consolation came from Miss Rachel de Solla as the maiden aunt, a reactionary type of the most confirmed stolidity, with a weakness for diamonds and indigestion. Miss Marie Löhr had many clever things to say, but it didn't matter what Miss de Solla said; her manner was irresistible.
I must doubt, however, whether the excellent work of the actors will carry the play to success. Even its title is obscure. The only thing I know about "birds of a feather" is that they are supposed to "flock together"; and I have always been given to understand that the adage alludes to the mutual attraction of similar types. Nobody ever told me that it was meant to indicate that the sins of the father bird are liable to be reproduced in his chicken,
Anna Pavlova.
She hasn't changed at all. Many Russian dancers have come and gone since last she was with us, but there is still none like her, none. Her perfect technique remains the least of her graces. The secret of her charm lies deeper, in the power to interpret and convey emotions in the language of her art. To watch her feet alone is to hear the shuddering sigh of her Dying Swan, but her whole body is alert to translate every nuance of her theme.
She can draw beauty even from an anticlimax. Again and again in Snowflakes, when her partner withdrew the support of his hand, she poised for a moment, and, when the poise had to cease, covered her descent with the most fascinating gestures of head and arms.
I liked her least (if one may talk of her like that) as the gipsy-girl in Amarilla; not that she failed in dramatic intensity but that jealous passion seems alien to her temperament as we have learned to know it. I think, however, that my judgment was tainted by her wig, which greatly distressed me.
In M. Volinine she has a very accomplished partner. His solo as a Pierrot, danced to a familiar air of Dvorák's, was the most delightful of "divertissements." Her other dancers, Russian and English, make up a really excellent company. The presto furioso of the wild gipsy dance in Amarilla, to the exciting music of Glozounow and Drigo, was a brilliant tour de force.
My only complaint (apart from Amarilla's wig) is that the programme's explanation of the motive of Snowflakes was beyond me. "A little girl," it says, "receives as a present a nut-cracker in the form of a doll. The doll is in reality a Prince who has been transformed by a bad fairy, but by an act of devotion to the little girl he is restored to life. He then leads his little friend and other children to the Kingdom of Pine-trees where the Christmas-tree was born." It is true that the music was from Tschaikowski's "Casse-Noisettes," and that the snow-scene was suggestive of Christmas-time; but there was no sign of a "nut-cracker in the form of a doll," or, if there was, I can't think how it escaped me, for I was watching with all my eyes.
O.S.
