As we have said, Mr. Dion Boucicault does wonders for the part of Josephine. Mr. Graham Browne is excellent as James, whose golf-clubs and dilettante attitudes proclaim him the late Prime Minister; and Mr. Kenneth Douglas and A. G. Matthews are excellent respectively as C. B. and Lord Rosebery.
Mr. Louis Calvert is nicely sleepy as John Bull, and Miss Grace Lane and Miss Mabel Hackney, as Fair and Free, look very charming, and indulge in some Grigolati work on a wire, although we cannot quite make out why they should. It seems impossible that Mr. Barrie’s jokes should ever be anything but successful, so probably these will enjoy a long vogue, but personally we would prefer to see such an excellent company of actors and actresses playing in something in which they have a chance of showing to better advantage.
At the Haymarket Theatre the welcome revival of “The Man from Blankley’s” is proving a great success, and eight times a week Lord Strathpeffer has been dining with the Tidmarshes and their strange acquaintances.
Mr. Anstey’s story of how his lordship found his way into the wrong house in Bayswater, and being mistaken for the hired guest from Blankley’s emporium, spent a perplexing evening amongst strangers, is extremely funny. And it is made funnier still by the fine company playing at the Haymarket. Mr. Charles Hawtrey is immense in his original part of Strathpeffer, and Messrs. Henry Kemble and Aubrey Fitzgerald as the pompous uncle, Gilwattle, and the brainless Poffley are inimitable. Moreover, Mr. Arthur Playfair resumes his part of the hired butler, out of which he extracts any amount of undignified fun. Mr. Weedon Grossmith now plays the host, and fits the part to perfection. Of the ladies Miss Fanny Brough is as humorous as ever in the rôle of the worried hostess, and Miss Dagmar Wiehe, a new-comer, is very charming and natural as the Governess.
“The Man from Blankley’s” is just about the most amusing unmusical entertainment in London nowadays, and is a very prominent example of the success which can attend a revival of a popular play done by a first-class company.
We were interested by the remark of a very wise woman who traced a great similarity between “The Man from Blankley’s” and that great masterpiece, “His House in Order.”
In each case there is a girl very much out of her element amongst the strangest beings that imagination could depict, and in each case there comes to her rescue a man of distinction. The Tidmarshes live in Bayswater, and Mr. Jesson lives in the provinces. It was amusing to hear the comparison of the two plays, but we have no space now to do more than make a passing reference to the ingenuity of our wise friend.
At the Lyric Theatre, Mr. H. B. Irving is to be complimented upon his good work as the adaptor, producer, and interpreter of a very interesting play.
“Jeunesse” is the name of the work by Mr. André Picard, as produced at the Odéon Theatre, but since the title “Youth” has already been appropriated for an English play, Mr. Irving has been well advised to call his production by the name of the heroine, “Mauricette,” for she is the keynote of the whole composition.
It is a pathetic little story, this, which comes, unlike most French successes, healthily enough into a London theatre without any excision or operation of the scalpel of the censor.