The farce was varied by a very amateur romance as between a young American and the niece of an hotel-keeper; also by a slab of melodrama (dealing with the girl's parentage) which only escaped from pure banality by the too brief glimpse it gave us of that admirable actress, Miss Ruth Mackay.
The scene (perhaps the best part of the whole show) was laid in "An Ancient Grove" adjacent to a German University. (The catalogue, peculiarly reticent about proper names, offers my memory no refreshment.) This "Ancient Grove," unchanged throughout the play, served a number of useful purposes. It made excuse for the intermittent apparition (otherwise inexplicable) of a little woodland figure that played upon a pipe. Its proximity to an hotel afforded occasion for meal after meal en plein air. Its proximity to a University Town encouraged the frequent passage of German students, vivacious and vocal; also the convenient appearance of any foreign resident or visitor at a moment's notice. Its Statue of Venus (fully draped) afforded an authentic incitement to the making of love. Its environs enabled Mr. Jerome to dispose of his puppets whenever their presence became undesirable. They simply said, "Let us stroll in the woods;" or "Come for a walk with me," and he was rid of them. Finally the "Ancient Grove" contained a central patch of boscage in whose cover one of the duellists, arriving on the terrain a little before the time, remained perdu in slumber, undisturbed by a loud conversation carried on within a few feet of him by all the other parties to the combat.
Indeed the scenery put in some good work, and I really don't know what we should have done without it.
The Great Gamble was, of course, the lottery of marriage. But for some of us it meant the risk we ran in attending the first night of a play by Mr. Jerome after our bitter experience of his Rowena in Search of a Father. To say that his present work is an improvement upon his last would be to damn it with a fainter praise than it deserves. The Great Gamble is a strange and inscrutable medley, but it has its exhilarating moments, and the humour of its dialogue, though it is mitigated by the Professor's contributions, is worthy of a much better design.
O. S.
"Now that Miss Cecil Leitch has won the Ladies' Golf Championship after seven years' unsuccessful striving, it may be suggested that she might alter the spelling of her name to Leach. Just to show how she stuck to it!"—Glasgow Evening News.
The writer should have stuck to his dictionary.
"It was officially stated yesterday that Dr. Herbert William Moxon, the son of a former prominent Unionist in West Derbyshire, had consented to address a meeting of Liberals with a view to his adaptation as Liberal candidate for West Derbyshire."
Daily Mail.