Court in the Act; or, Mag-Pi-nero flying to a Wood with a few leaves from the Gilbertum Topsyturveycum Bookum.
Mrs. Wood can't expect to be always the lucky possessor of a Dandy Dick, nor can Mr. Pinero hope always to be up to that really good farcical standard. The good Pinero has nodded over this. The Cabinet Minister is an excellent title thrown away. The Cabinet Minister himself, Mr. Arthur Cecil, in his official costume, playing the flute, is as burlesque as the General in full uniform, in Mr. Gilbert's "Wedding March," sitting with his feet in hot-water. The married boy and girl, with their doll baby and irritatingly unreal quarrels, reminded me of the boy-and-girl lovers in Brantingham Hall. The mother of The Macphail—the wooden Scotch figure (represented by Mr. B. Thomas) still to be seen at the door of small tobacconists,—is a Helen-Macgregorish bore, curiously suggestive of what Mr. Righton might look like in petticoats. Mrs. John Wood's part is a very trying one, and not what the public expect from her.
Though the piece begins fairly well, yet it is dull until Mr. Weedon Grossmith, as Joseph Lebanon, comes on the scene in the Second Act, when everyone begins to be amused, and ends by being disappointed. Joseph remains the hero of the situation, and, cad as he is, the behaviour of the ladies and gentlemen towards him reduces them to his level, so that, in spite of its being a farce, we begin to pity him as we pity Mr. Guthrie's Pariah, and as those who remember Theodore Hook's novel have pitied that wretched little cad, Jack Brag. The part is not equal to Aunt Jack's Solicitor, and had Mr. Grossmith, by the kind permission of Mr. Pinero, departed from the conventional Adelphi and Drury Lane type of comic Hebraic money-lender, he would have done better. The piece is played with the burlesque earnestness that characterised the first performances of Engaged at the Haymarket, which piece the Scotch accent recalls to the playgoer's memory. No one can possibly feel any interest in the lovers.
As a rule Mr. Pinero's stage-management is simple and effective: but here the design is confused and the result is an appearance of restless uncertainty. Drumdurris Castle seems to be a lunatic asylum, of which the principal inmates are two elderly female patients, one, like a twopence-coloured plate of some ancient Scotch heroine, with a craze about Scotland, and the other mad on saying "Fal-lal," and screaming out something about "motives." If eight of the characters were cut out, "they'd none of 'em be missed," and if the play were compressed into one Act, it would contain the essence of all that was worth retaining, and, with a few songs and dances, might make an attractive lever de rideau or "laughable farce to finish," before, or after, a revival of Dandy Dick.
Amicus Candidus.