"Three Men in a boat."
Never, at any time, has this version of the French play been so well cast as it is now at Garrick Theatre, though nervousness told on all the actors, especially on the elder ones, except, apparently, Mrs. Bancroft, in whose performance there was hardly any trace of it, though once she nearly missed her cue while resting awhile at the back of the stage.
The part of Lady Henry Fairfax has literally nothing whatever to do with the plot, and were it not played as it is now, and played so capitally by Mrs. Bancroft, it would be better, for an English audience at least, if omitted entirely, or reduced to a few appropriate lines in pleasant places. An English audience wants the story, when once begun, to go on without any break or interruption; and indeed, but for dramatic effect, an English audience is inclined to resent even the division of a piece into Acts, unless such arrangement is evidently necessitated by some heavy mechanical change of scenery.
So our audiences would decidedly prefer to have the rôles of Lady Henry and The Marquise de Rio Zarès (with her wearisome iteration about "Don Alva," and played with rather too much accentuation by Lady Monckton) reduced to the smallest possible algebraic expression. Mr. Bancroft was the same Count Orloff as he was years ago on the little stage of the old Prince of Wales's Theatre; his action more deliberate than when he was younger and more impetuous; his pauses for meditation longer by a thought or so than of yore; while in his tone and manner there was just a delicately-deepened colouring of the genuine original Bancroftian "Old Master." To Mr. Bancroft, resuscitating our old courtly friend Count Orloff (now Count Orl-on-again), I would address the once well-known line from "Woodman, spare that Tree"—
"Touch not a single bow!"
Arthur Cecil, too, as Baron Stein, excellent, cela va sans dire; yet, somehow, his effects now seem to me to be laid on with too broad a brush, especially in the scene of his last appearance, where he makes a sly, and, for the Baron Stein, a rather over-elaborated and farcical attempt to recapture the letter he has just given up. Forbes Robertson is good from first to last as the very weak-knee'd Julian Beauelere, sufficiently emotional in the strong situations, and never better than when the character itself is at its weakest; that is, in the one great scene with his wife.
The Algie Fairfax, of Mr. Gilbert Hare, was natural where the authors have allowed him to be natural, and best, therefore, in the last Act, where he has become a responsible personage in a diplomatic office. The "three-men-in-a-difficulty" scene went as well as ever, though, on the whole, played far too slowly, and with so much "suppressed force," that the celebrated "Monsieur! à vos ordres!" when Orloff suddenly breaks out into "the language of diplomacy," did not electrify the house. On the contrary, the audience took it very quietly, awaiting with some curiosity the interference of Henry Beauclerc. And it was at this point that the services of Mr. John Hare in this character were invaluable. Never had his crisp incisive style produced more marked effect. It is a pity that in the Third Act, which being the weak point of the play requires all the strength of the actor to be seriously employed, Mr. Hare should have given a very light comedy, nay, even a farcical touch to his treatment of the "business" of sniffing the perfume—when he is literally "on the scent"—and to the momentous situation of his interview with Zicka. "Maintenant à nos deux!" Odd that, in his treatment of the strength of the scent, Sardou should have shown the feebleness of his methods. Yet so it is. The play, at this point, being practically played out, he carelessly chucks the puppets into a corner. He has made his great scenes, and there's an end of it; let the weakest go to the wall.
Duet—Baron Cecil Stein and Lady Henry Bancroft Fairfax (with original model of Strasbourg Clock)—"Here we are again!"
