"THE 'KEY-NOTE'-ORIOUS MRS. EBBSMITH."
The Dowdy Mrs. Ebbsmith makes it hot for her young man.
Mr. Pinero's new play at the Garrick Theatre is a series of scenes in dialogue with only one "situation," which comes at the end of the third act, and was evidently intended to be utterly unconventional, dreadfully daring, and thrillingly effective. "Unconventional?" Yes. "Daring?" Certainly; for to burn a bible might have raised a storm of sibilation. But why dare so much to effect so little? For at the reading, or during rehearsal, there must have been very considerable hesitation felt by everybody, author included, as to the fate of this risky situation—this "momentum unde pendet"—and for which nothing, either in the character or in the previous history of the heroine, has prepared us. Her earliest years have been passed in squalor; she has made a miserable marriage; then she has become a Socialist ranter, and hopes to achieve a triumph as a Socialist demagogue. Like Maypole Hugh in Barnaby Rudge she would go about the world shrieking "No property! No property!" and when, in a weak moment, she consents to temporarily drop her "mission," she goes to another extreme and comes out in an evening dress—I might say almost comes out of an evening dress, so egregiously décolleté is it—to please the peculiar and, apparently, low taste of her lover, who is a married man,—"which well she knows it," as Mrs. Gamp observes,—but with whom she is living, and with whom, like Grant Allen's The Woman who did (a lady whom in many respects Mr. Pinero's heroine closely resembles), and who came to grief in doing it, she intends to continue living. This man, her paramour, she trusts will be her partner in the socialistic regeneration of the human race. At the close of the third act Mrs. Ebbsmith, being such as the author of her being has made her, is presented with a bible, and, in a fit of ungovernable fury, she pitches it into the stove "with all her might and main"; and then it suddenly occurs to her that she has committed some terrible crime (more probably it occurred to the author that he had committed the unpardonable sin of offending his audience)—and so she shoots out her arm into a nice, cool-looking stove (suggestive of no sort of danger to her or the book), and drags out the pocket volume apparently quite as uninjured as is her own hand at the moment, though this is subsequently carefully bound up with a white handkerchief in the last act. Well—that's all. There is the situation. The Key-note-orious Mrs. Ebbsmith is supposed to repent of her sins against society; and off she goes to become the companion of the unmarried parson and of the lively widow his sister. What the result of this arrangement will be is pretty clear. The Key-note-orious One will soon be the parson's bride; but "that is another story."
To carry out this drama of inaction, as it is schemed, should occupy eight persons something under two hours; but it takes thirteen persons three hours to carry it along. Five of these dramatis personæ are superfluous; and much time is wasted on dialogues in Italian and French that could be "faked up" from any conversation-book in several languages, and evidently only lugged in under the mistaken impression that thereby a touch of "local colour" is obtained.
As it is the audience wearies of the long speeches, and there is nothing in the action that can rouse them as there was in The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, a play that Mr. Pinero has not yet equalled, much less surpassed.
But what is a real pleasure, and what will attract all lovers of good acting, is, first of all, Mr. Forbes Robertson's admirable impersonation of the difficult, unsympathetic rôle of a despicably selfish, self-conceited, cowardly prig; and, secondly, to a certain extent, the rendering of the heroine by Mrs. Patrick Campbell, who, however, does not come within measurable distance of her former self as Mrs. Tanqueray—her "great stove scene" being about the weakest point in her performance. But there cannot be a divided opinion as to the perfect part given to Mr. John Hare, and as to the absolutely perfect manner in which it is played by this consummate artist in character. All the scenes in which he appears are admirably conceived by the author, and as admirably interpreted by the actor.
Transformation Scene. The Rowdy-Dowdy Mrs. Ebbsmith fascinates the Dook.
Mr. Hare's performance of the Duke of St. Olpherts is a real gem, ranking among the very best things he has ever done, and I may even add "going one better." It is on his acting, and on the acting of the scenes in which he appears, that the ultimate popularity of the piece must depend. The theatrical stove-cum-book situation may tell with some audiences better than with others, but it is not an absolute certainty; while every scene in which the Duke of St. Olpherts takes part, as long as this character is played by Mr. Hare, is in itself an absolute isolated triumph. Mr. Aubrey Smith, as the modern young English moustached parson, en voyage, with his pipe, and bible in his pocket (is he a colporteur of some Biblical Society, with a percentage on the sale? otherwise the book is an awkward size to carry about, especially if he has also a Murray with him), is very true to life, at all events in manner and appearance; and Miss Jeffreys, as his sister, who looks just as if she had walked out of a fashion-plate in The Gentlewoman, or some lady's journal, plays discreetly and with considerable self-repression. Of course it will remain one of the notable pieces of the year; but what will keep it green in the memory of playgoers is not the story, nor its heroine, nor its hero, but the captivating impersonation of the Duke of St. Olpherts by Mr. John Hare.