AT THE PLAY.
"The Daisy."
I imagine that the authors who founded this play on a Hungarian original regarded it as an ambitious piece of work. If so, they were right in the sense that they have attempted something very much beyond their powers. In the view of the gentleman who addressed us at the fall of the curtain (I understand that he was one of the authors) it offered magnificent opportunities (I think "magnificent" was the word) for the brilliant gifts of two of the actors. Certainly it covered a good bit of ground, what with this world and the next; for it started with roundabouts on the Heath, and got as far away as the Judgment Day (Hungarian style?)—and fourteen years after.
I may have a contemptibly weak stomach for this kind of thing, but I confess that I don't care much for a representation of the Judgment Day in a melodrama of low life. Of course low life has just as much right as any other sort of life to be represented in a Judgment Day scene; but it ought to behave itself there and not introduce back-chat.
I should explain that it was a special Suicide Court, and that the object of The Magister, as the Presiding Judge was named in the programme, was to inquire into the record of the delinquent and, if his answers were satisfactory, to allow him to revisit the scenes of his earthly life in order to repair any little omissions that he might have made in the hurry of departure. Unfortunately the leading case was a bad example of suicide. It had not been deliberate; he had simply killed himself impromptu in a tight corner to avoid arrest for intended murder.
Worse still, when he returned to earth after a lapse of fourteen years' purgatory (between the sixth and seventh scenes), for his record was a rotten one and he had shown no signs of penitence, the revenant made very poor use of his hour. Returning to his wife whom he had brutalised, he found that she had taught their girl-child to regard him as a paragon of virtue, and most of his limited time was spent in correcting this beautiful legend. You see, at the time of his death he had had no chance of making the child realise how bad he was, for the excellent reason that she had not yet been born, so he seized this opportunity of making good that omission.
As a practical illustration of the kind of man he really had been, he struck the child violently on the arm. We all saw him do it and we all heard the smack, but the child assured us that she had not felt anything. This I suppose was the author's way, ingenuous enough, of reminding us that it was a case of spirit and not of flesh, whatever our eyes and ears might persuade us to think of it.
Already in a previous scene there had been the same old difficulty. While the man lay dead on his bed his spirit had been summoned by a Higher Power (indicated in a peep-show), and his corpse sat up, displacing the prostrate form of the widow, who had to take up a new position, without however appearing to notice anything. It was still sitting up when the curtain fell, and incidentally was caught in the act of resuming its recumbent position when the curtain rose again for the purpose of allowing the actors to receive our respectful plaudits.
Behind me I heard an American lady suggest that if they could somehow distinguish the spirit from the body it would be better for our illusions. To which her neighbour expressed the opinion that they would eventually manage to do that feat. I await, less hopefully, this development in stage mechanism. Meanwhile Mary Rose has much to answer for.
"The Daisy" (Mr. Caine). "What made you take a fancy to me?"
Julia (Miss Merrall). "I dunno."
(Sympathetic appreciation of her ignorance on part of audience.)
The play began promisingly enough with a scene full of colour and humanity, of humour and pathos. We were among the roundabouts, whose florid and buxom manageress, Mrs. Muscat (admirably played by Miss Suzanne Sheldon), was having a quarrel of jealousy with her assistant and late lover, "The Daisy," who had been seen taking notice of Another. The dumb devotion of this child, Julia (Miss Mary Merrall), who could never find words for her love—she said little beyond "Yuss" and "I dunno"—was a very moving thing; and the patient stillness with which she bore his subsequent brutality held us always under a strange fascination.
For the rest it was an ugly and sordid business, relieved only by the coy confidences of the amorous Maria (played by Miss Gladys Gordon with a nice sense of fun). Mr. Henry Caine, as "The Daisy," presented very effectively the rough-and-ready humour and the frank brutality of his type; but he perhaps failed to convey the devastating attractions which he was alleged to have for the frail sex; and his sudden spasms of tragic emotion seemed a little out of the picture.
Apart from the painful crudity of the scene that was loosely described as "The Other Side," the play abounded in amateurisms. For one thing there was too much sermonising. It began with an obtrusive homily on the part of an inspector of police, who went out of his way to admonish Julia about the danger of associating with "The Daisy." Another instance was that of the bank-messenger, a person of such self-possession and detachment that he contrived to deliver a moral address while holding one foiled villain at the point of his revolver and gripping the other's wrist as in a vice.
Nothing again could have been more naïve than the innocent home-coming of the domestic carving-knive, freshly sharpened, from the grinder's just in time to be diverted to the objects of a murderous enterprise.
Altogether, it was rather poor stuff, unworthy of the talent of many of its interpreters and of the trouble that Miss Edith Craig had spent over its scenic effects. Perhaps the audience had been led to expect too much, for "The Daisy," far from being the "wee, modest" flower of Robert Burns, had been at some pains to draw preliminary attention to its merits.
O.S.
The Bedroom Shortage.
"That a woman ought to dress quietly and practically in the street is unquestionable."
"Times" Fashion article.
"As the harvest season this year is late, sport will not be general for at least two weeks hence, when grain crops may be expected to be in stook. For some time to come sheep will be confined to the low hill-sides and pasture lands and turnip fields, and a few good bags were had there yesterday."—Scotch Paper.
We still prefer the old-fashioned sport of partridge-shooting.
