SHOWS VIEWS.
Amongst entertainments of a pleasing character the performances of "Mr. and Mrs. German Reed" hold their own gallantly. At the present moment a little play called Tally Ho is occupying the boards, much to the delight of those serious pleasure-seekers who consider a box at a theatre wicked, but find no particular harm in the stalls of St. George's Hall. Mr. Alfred Reed and Miss Fanny Holland are as amusing as ever, and the music is all that could be desired. The dialogue of the piece, or entertainment, or whatever it is, is not too new. I fancy the author must have seen London Assurance, and listened to Lady Gay Spanker's description of the fox chase. And having seen the piece and heard the speech, possibly read the burlesque thereon by the late Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, in the Scenes from Rejected Comedies, published as long ago as the forties. "How time flies!" as a lady behind me observed, after expressing her opinion that Mr. Corney Grain was better than his pupil—John Parry! "I remember him as far back as a quarter of a century," continued the fair dame, "and didn't you hear him say he was over fifty years old when he sang that song calling himself an old fogey?" Mr. Grain fails to do himself justice when he assumes an elderly air inconsistent with the number of his summers. Such an assumption can but cause pain—to his contemporaries!
On Thursday last The Woman Hater was produced for the first time in London at Mr. Terry's Theatre (on the grounds that familiarity breeds contempt, I prefer to allow the actor to retain his titular prefix), with more or less success. On the whole I condole with our country cousins if they have been allowed to see this strange play very frequently. Personally I would not care to form a part of any audience at Mr. Terry's Theatre during its run, which I am bound to add I am afraid will not be a long one. The construction of the three-act farce (as it is called) is feeble in the extreme, and suggests that the author, from a literary point of view, has a great deal to learn. I do not think (unless his future pieces are very unlike The Woman Hater) that he will have much chance of gaining a permanent position in the Temple of Fame. This is merely a matter of opinion, but, speaking for myself, had I a theatre (which I should call of course Mr. Thingembob's Theatre, or the Theatre Royal Dash Blank, Esq.), I believe I should somehow or other instinctively avoid the works of Mr. David Lloyd for some time to come. That is to say if he confined his pen to farce and comedy. It is quite possible he may be much more at home in tragedy. As a fact, there is a sort of gloomy glamour about The Woman Hater that suggests the reflection that, after all, the play might have been more exciting if a murder had been skilfully introduced into Act I., and it had been written throughout in blank verse. I think the lover, Tom Ripley, might thus have been murdered with or without (for preference, with) his sweetheart. Early in Act II. the character very nicely played by Mr. Kemble might have committed suicide, with one or two others; for choice, others. Act III. might have been allowed (after the necessary alterations had been made to fit it to the requirements of the novel development of the original plot) to stand as it is. In its present form the incidents connected with the spiriting away (after a desperate and revolting fight with the keepers) of the hero to a Lunatic Asylum, are, to say the least, unpleasant. Mr. Bishop, as the psychological specialist (the resident medical superintendent of the licensed house), was excellent. It is a question, however, whether those well-intentioned representatives of the Lord Chancellor, the Commissioners in Lunacy, would have been entirely satisfied with his action in connection with the incarceration of one sane patient in the place of another patient equally free from mental disease. But that is a matter affecting the author rather than the player. Miss M. A. Victor, as a widow lady of great wealth and superior position, was, of course, quite in her element, and gave an admirable sketch of a British matron from Belgravia or Mayfair. Mr. Terry, too, deserves a word of praise for his own droll performances, which caused more than once, on the first night, a burst of hearty laughter. Pleasantry apart, in spite of the acting, good all round, I fear The Woman Hater will soon have to return to the provinces, to make room for something just a little better suited to the London requirements of Mr. Terry and the audiences of Mr. Terry's Theatre.
New Book.—The Green Ways of England. By a Warwickshire Man.
