There are those who say that Transatlantic humour should be interpreted exclusively by a native cast, and that an Anglo-American alliance is a mistake. I trust President Wilson's recent policy will not be affected by this view. Certainly, though the combination was responsible for the noisiest fun of the farce, the purely American performance of Miss Margaret Moffatt at the opening of the First Act was as good as anything in the play. But happily this is not one of those imported creations that overwhelm my uninstructed intelligence with exotic colour and exotic slang.
Mr. Edmund Gwenn, as Max Rosenbaum, impresario, was in irresistible form. Miss Marie Löhr, in the part of the leading lady, was at her lightest and therefore her best; but Lady Tree (her designing mother), though she played very hard and incisively, could scarcely have satisfied her own very nice sense of humour with what was to be got out of a character that resembled nothing on earth (or the Eastern hemisphere anyhow).
In the midst of all the mirth there was a pathetic passage between a couple of impecunious players, Johnny Brinkley (played by Mr. George Elton, who had many good things to say and said them well) and Effie, his wife, on the theme of the precariousness of their career. It must have melted the cynical heart of many a critic in the audience, and I for one was almost persuaded to confine myself for the future to encomium in these columns.
However, there is no flattery in the compliments I beg to offer to Mr. James Forbes for a very diverting evening. Perhaps the last Act dragged a little, but in any case after the orgy he had given us we were ripe for reaction. With most imported plays one is apt to doubt whether the humour is novel in its essence or merely a matter of unfamiliar form, common enough in its place of origin. But the humour of Mr. Forbes, or at least the best of it, is something more than American.
O. S.
"She heard him blowing his nose on the hall mat, and she understood the major sufficiently to know that this portended something."—Home Chat.
We have always regarded this behaviour as ominous, even in the case of civilians.
"Once you have a wife and are tied down to the world, she creates the necessity of a house and saves you from being a wanderer on the face of the earth. No wife, no house. Hence, say our Shastras, it is not the building called the house that is the wife, it is the wife who is the house. And even now, both among the high and the low, it is usual for a Hindu to speak of his wife as his house."
N. G. Chandavarkarin "The Times of India."