"Daddy Long-Legs."
Daddy Long-Legs is a pleasant American sentimental comedy made by Jean Webster out of her very jolly book, and not so sticky as some of our importations of the same general type. The four Acts are phases in the development of Judy (or Jerusha) Abbott, orphan; and, as normally happens in book-plays, development is extremely abrupt. Act I. shows us Judy as the drudge of the orphanage breaking into flame of rebellion on the day of the visit of the trustees. Naturally the trustees are all trustees pour rire, except one real good rich man, Jervis Pendleton, who admires the orphan's spirit, and decides that she is to have her chance at his charges; but is on no account to know her benefactor.
In Act II., a year later, Judy is not merely the most popular but the best dressed girl in her college. She still dreams about her unknown benefactor, whom she calls Daddy Long-Legs, and assumes to be a hoary old man. Pendleton comes to Commem., or its equivalent, to have a peep at his ward, and loses his heart. In the Third Act, three years later, our heroine is a famous author, and Pendleton, coming (still incog.) to propose, is refused by a Judy who has taken to worrying unduly (and not altogether convincingly, if you ask me) about her lack of family. And, of course, in Act IV., wedding bells.
Miss Renée Kelly has a charming personality, and a smile which alone is worth going to see. She trounced the matron and the incredible trustees with a fierce fury, and seemed to have easy command of the changes of mood and tense which her fast-moving circumstances required. A pretty twinkling star. Mr. Charles Waldron is a skilful actor. If he, perhaps, grimaced a little too much by way of not letting us miss the obvious points of the little mystery, he made as admirable a proposal of marriage as I have ever heard on the stage (or off it for that matter, with perhaps one exception); but to suppose that so accomplished a lover would accept a mere mournful shake of the head as a final refusal is simply too absurd. Miss Fay Davis made quite a little triumph of gentle gracious kindliness out of one of those potentially tiresome explanatory parts without which no mystifications can be contrived. Miss Kate Jepson is a comédienne of rich grain, and gave a very amusing study of the hero's old nurse. Miss Jean Gadell, that clever specialist in dour unpleasant stage women, made a properly repulsive thing out of the matron of the orphanage. Mr. Hylton Allen scored his points as a comic lover with droll effect. If the distinctly clever children of the home (Judy excepted) had been effectively put on the contraband list I should not have worried. They were unduly noisy (for art, not for life perhaps), and they overdid their parts, being not only rowdy in the absence, and abject in the presence, of authority, but different kinds of children—not merely the same children in two moods.
Altogether a pleasant play pleasantly and competently performed.
T.
"Cabinet Leekage."—Daily Paper.
Now why, we wonder, do they spell it that way?