Author of Play. "No, he won't die, because this is a 'happy ending' play, but the noise that goes on outside his room would kill him in ordinary life."
Betty Dunbar: Miss Eva Moore.
Sir Egbert Englefield: Mr. H. V. Esmond.
When there is a good deal of talk on the stage about a certain character, who however remains "off" throughout the play and gives you no chance to discover for yourself what he is like, then I have an instinctive distrust of him. If his name is as bad as Cecil he is practically doomed. Betty Dunbar, widow, ran away from her rich sister's house and spent a night in London with such a Cecil. Betty had arrived at the dangerous age of forty, and was temporarily and ridiculously in love with this young bounder (as I felt him to be) of twenty-two. But the fact that, at the very time when she was thus making a fool of herself in London, her younger son, Jack, was falling off a tree and nearly killing himself in the country brought her to her senses. When she returned to the country to find Jack at death's door, her love for Cecil died and she could only think of him with hatred.
Now I can remember wondering, when I read The Vicar of Wakefield at an early and innocent age, why Dr. Primrose was so anxious that his daughter Olivia should be married to the beast with whom she had eloped, when it would be so much better for her if Thornhill left her (as he was willing to do) and she returned unmarried to her father. I am older now, and I know that in the good Vicar's opinion only thus could his daughter's "honour" be "preserved." But the world is also older now, and perhaps the oldest person in it is the woman suffragist—such a one, for instance, as Betty's elder sister, Ethel, who carried copies of Votes for Women about with her when she strolled through the home park. That Ethel should share Dr. Primrose's ingenuous views on this matter is unbelievable—by me, but not by the author. For she insisted, under threat of cutting off supplies, that Betty should marry Cecil, and (so to speak) become a lady again. Betty wisely refused, which left the way clear for Sir Egbert Englefield, and so brought down the curtain. I haven't mentioned Sir Egbert before, but he was there or thereabouts all the time, and being in the flesh Mr. H. V. Esmond, author of the play, it was obvious that he would have the pull over any unseen Cecil in the final arrangement of partners.
Although Ethel appears to be impossible, and the other characters mostly conventional, The Dangerous Age makes a very charming entertainment at the Vaudeville, a patchwork of humour and pathos ingeniously woven together; of which the humour was as fresh and jolly as anything I have heard on the stage, and the pathos put me in greater danger of being caught "blubbering like a seal" than I have ever been before. It is to Masters Reginald Grasdorff and Roy Royston that I owe my special thanks. Two more delightful boys on the stage cannot be imagined. Indeed I was at least as sorry as Betty when Jack fell off his tree, for I knew then that I should not see Master Roy again that evening. Fortunately Reginald remained, and acted with great skill a part which suddenly became serious. But I wish Osborne boys on the stage wouldn't wear their uniforms in the holidays when they climb trees. It emphasizes their Osbirth (if I may use the word) at the expense of their boyishness. Miss Eva Moore and Mr. Esmond were excellent, the latter playing a perfect Wyndham part without the Wyndham mannerisms. Mr. Leslie Banks, representing an entirely incredible person, was exactly like somebody I knew; a feat, it seems to me, of some skill.
M.
"The Wynmartens."
