AT THE PLAY.
"ANTHONY IN WONDERLAND."
It was not till about the middle of the play, and after a narcotic had been administered to him, that Anthony got there; but we were in Wonderland almost from the start, without the aid of drugs. For we were asked to believe that Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY was a visionary, amorous of an ideal which no earthly woman could realise for him. Occasionally he had caught a glimpse of it in the creations of Art—at the Tate Gallery or Madame TUSSAUD'S or the cinema; but in Bond Street never.
And the pity of it was that he had come in for a fortune of seven hundred thousand pounds odd, which would pass elsewhere unless he married by a given date. It was therefore the clear duty of his relatives—a couple of sisters and their husbands—to find a wife for him. After vainly trying him with every pretty woman of their acquaintance they had resort, in desperation, to the black art of a certain Mr. Mortimer John (U.S.A.), an infallible inventor of stunts, who made a rapid diagnosis of the case and at once pronounced himself confident of success.
Briefly—for it is a long and elaborate story—his scheme is to choose a charming girl, and make a film drama round her. Anthony, with family, is taken to see the show and occupies the best box in the Prince of Wales's Theatre, from which, after a little critical comment upon us in the audience, he falls in love with the heroine. It is the typical film of lurid life on a Californian ranch, and might almost have been modelled on one of Mr. Punch's cinema burlesques. There are the familiar scenes of a plot to hang the girl's lover, swiftly alternating with scenes of her progress on horseback through the primeval forest, and concluding with her arrival just in time to shoot the villain and untie the noose that encircles her lover's carotid.
On the return of the party from the cinema, Mortimer John describes to Anthony the powers of a drug which induces the most vivid of dreams. He, John, had once been in Anthony's pitiful case, and through the services of this drug had achieved his quest of the ideal woman. Anthony, greatly intrigued, consents to swallow a sample of the potion. It is a simple narcotic, and under its influence he is conveyed, in a state of coma and a suitable change of apparel, into the heart of Surrey, where at sunrise he is restored to animation and has the scenes of the evening's drama re-enacted before his eyes, as originally filmed for exhibition. Under the impression that this is merely the vivid dream that he had been promised, he himself takes part in the living drama, playing the noble rôle of an exceptionally white man. In the course of it he exchanges pledges of eternal love with Aloney the heroine. Finally, in a spasm of heroic self-sacrifice, he takes poison with the alleged purpose of saving the heroine's life. We never quite gather how his suicide should serve this end, but then the whole atmosphere is charged with that obscurity which is the very breath of the film-drama.
AN IDYLL OF MOVIE-LAND.
Anthony Silvertree MR. CHARLES HAWTREY.
Aloney MISS WINIFRED BARNES.
The poison is nothing worse than another dose of the narcotic, and under its spell he is spirited back to London, where, on arrival, he is confronted with the lady of his "dream," and Mortimer John secures a colossal fee. In addition, for he has had the happy thought of selecting his own daughter for the heroine, he secures a plutocrat for his son-in-law.
The worst of a play in which one is conducted out of ordinary life into the regions of improbability by processes of which every step has to be just conceivably possible, is that the conscientious development of the scheme is apt to be tedious. And, frankly, the first scene or two, though lightened by expectation, were on the heavy side.
But the film itself, when we got to it, was excellent fooling, and the reconstruction of the original drama at Dorking-in-the-Wild-West was really delightful. You can easily guess that Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY, as a cinema hero, very conscious of his heroism ("it's a way we have in Montague Square"), but always comfortably aware that in a dream, as he imagines it to be, he can well afford to make the handsomest of sacrifices, had a great chance. And he took it.
As the heroine, who has to play a rather thankless part in the mercenary designs of her parent, Miss WINIFRED BARNES contrived, very naïvely and prettily, to preserve an air of maiden reluctance under the most discouraging conditions. As Mortimer John Mr. SYDNEY VALENTINE had admirable scope for his sound and businesslike methods. Of Anthony's relations, all very natural and human, Miss LYDIA BILBROOKE was an attractive figure, and the part of Herbert Clatterby, K.C., was played by Mr. EDMUND MAURICE with his accustomed ease of manner.
If I wanted to find fault with any detail of the construction, it would be in the matter of the ring which Anthony places on the finger of Aloney in the cinema play. This was a spontaneous act not included in the scheme for which Mortimer John was given the credit. Yet as the means by which Anthony identified her on his return to consciousness it went far to bring that scheme to fruition. I think also that he ought to have shown some trace of surprise (I should myself) on finding that he had unconsciously exchanged his spotless evening clothes for the kit of a broncho-buster.
I have hinted already at the comparative dulness of the long introduction to what is the clou of the play—the film and its reconstructed scenes. Why not take a further wrinkle from the cinematic drama and throw upon the screen a succinct résumé of the previous argument? Three or four minutes of steady application to the text, and we might plunge into the very heart of things. I throw out this suggestion not with any hope of reward, but in part payment of my debt for some very joyous laughter. O.S.
"Wanted, Gentlewoman a few days old." The Lady.
This is much prettier than "Baby taken from birth."
| "AND LOOK HERE, FRITZ— | —WHATEVER HAPPENS— | —SEE YOU KEEP— |
| —THEM HANDS OF YOURS— | —WELL ABOVE— | —YOUR BLINKIN' HEAD." |
A SONG OF THE WOODLAND ELVES.
We hear the ruthless axes; we watch our rafters fall;
The seawind blows unhindered where stood our banquet-hall;
Our grassy rings are trampled, our leafy tents are torn—
Yet more would we, and gladly, to help the English-born.
For, leafy-crowned or frosted, the English oaks are ours;
The beeches are our playrooms, the elms our outlook towers;
And we were forest rangers before these woods had name,
And we were elves in England before the Romans came.
We watched the Druids worship; we watched the wild bulls feed;
We gave our oaks to ALFRED to build his ships at need;
And often in the moonlight our pricked ears in the wood
Have heard the hail of RUFUS, the horn of ROBIN HOOD.
But if our age-old roof-beams can serve her cause to-day,
The woodland elves of England will sign their rights away;
For none but will be woeful to hear the axes ring,
Yet none but would go homeless to aid an English King.
W.H.O.
GOOD OLD GOTHIC.
[An agitation for the total disuse of the Latin character, we learn from Press quotations published in The Daily Chronicle, is raging through the German Empire, and the Prussian Minister of the Interior has forbidden the use of any other character than German Gothic in the publications of the Statistical Bureau.]
The ways of the Hun comprehension elude,
They're so cleverly crass, so painstakingly crude;
For, in spite of his cunning and forethought immense,
He is often incurably stupid and dense
To the point of allowing his patriot zeal
To put a large spoke in his own driving-wheel.
An excellent instance of zeal of this sort
Is the movement, endorsed by official support,
To ban Latin type in the papers that flow
From the press of the Prussian Statistics Bureau.
Now the pride of the Germans, as dear as their pipe
And their beer, is their wonderful old Gothic type;
It makes ev'ry page look as black as your hat,
For the face of the letters is stodgy and fat;
It adds to the labour of reading, and tries
The student's pre-eminent asset, his eyes,
And in consequence lends a most lucrative aid
To people engaged in the spectacle trade.
But these manifest drawbacks to little amount
When tried by the only criteria that count:
Though the people who use it don't really need it,
It exasperates aliens whenever they read it.
It is solid, echt-Deutsch, free from Frenchified froth,
And in fine it is Gothic, befitting the Goth.
So when the great Prussian Statistics Bureau
Proscribes Latin letters and says they must go,
They are giving a lead which we earnestly hope
Will be followed beyond its original scope;
For the more German books that in Gothic are printed
The more will the spread of Hun "genius" be stinted,
And the larger the number, released from its gripe,
Of the students of Latin ideas—and type.
"Furniture for Poultry: 2 easy chairs, solid walnut frames, nicely upholstered and sound, 12/6 each; also 2 armchairs, 4 small chairs, walnut frames, nicely upholstered and sound, £2; 5 other chairs, upholstered in tapestry and leather, 5/- each."—The Bazaar.
Has this sort of thing Mr. PROTHERO'S approval? Some hens are already too much inclined to sit when we want them to lay.