Snseen . nentingt aune 1s.
The Vaudeville Theatre reopened last- #ng hither and thither of a crowd ol
night with two longish onc-act plays, of
supernumeraries geuild have leit it en¬
which the first is called.“ Between Sun¬
touched. However, once more the
set and Dawn,?' is in four scenes, and is
audience saw some capital acling, notably
from Miss Sarah Brocke, in the part o
from the pen of Mr. Hermon Quld. Its
the corrupt Marquise, Mr. MgKinnel:
principal figure is one Liz, the young
wise of Bill Higgins, a drunkard, to
the actor Henri, and Mr. Malcolm Cher
as the Duc de Cadignan.
whom she has been married for two
miserable years. When he is sober he is
H. M. W,
repellent enough; when he is drunk——
So she runs awav from him and sceks
shelter in a wretched doss-house kept by¬
San appalling Mrs. Harris, whose son jim
falls in love with her, begs her to throw
in her lot with him, and, after various
rebuffs—for Liz is acutely conscious
of tiie respectability of the marricd state
—succeeds. Left alone with her, then,
at twoa.m., he developsza form of erotie
mania, begins smiling strangely, asks her
to kiss him, and while she leans ner¬
vously forward to obey him, stabs her in
the back, so that she falls dead. The
appalling mother comes, tottering in to
learn what the noise is about, and finds
her son, still smiling, kneeling over the
corpse. On this picture tlie curtain
falls.
The author has done his work with a
good deal of deftness. The characters
ofthe husband and wife, and’of the hap¬
less Jun, pre well drawn, and the story
moves steadily aleng. His dénouement,
however, is bad art. Such a seizure as
that which turns voung Harris into a
murderer is nit sulted to the Theatre.
Pity, sorrow, änger, alarm—all these
emotions may leg#timately be excited by
the dramatist; ##e sinale of Mr. Quld's
play onlvreycker alsort ofrnausen. So
deep a degradation- sf“Sthe paragon of
animals!' is mere üittingly the theme of
ithe pathologieal lecturer than 'of the
Jramatist. However, the play was well
received last night, and the applause at
the finish was quite prolonged. Mr.
Norman Mekinnel and Mr. Edmond
Breon as the“lover? and husband re¬
spectively, and Miss Ada King and Miss
Alice Mansfield asstheir nicely contrasted
old mothers, acted admirablv; but Miss
May Blayney, in the part of Liz, addressed
her dialogue almost entirely to the
audience, and,
consequently,
an
scarcely be said to have contributed an
impersonation.
„
The# second play was Arthur
!Schnitzlersfamous grotesque,Thet
Green Cockatoo,ranslated into English
by Aliss Penelope Wheeler. The piese
was given last vear by thei Srage
Society, but is new to the geneial play¬
goer. It is rich in suggestion of sthe
passions which ledupto the French Revo¬
lution, and the way in which jest becomes
Tearnest and laughter is turned into
tragedy in the grim cellar ofthe Cockatoo
tavern, is visibly #the work of a deft
dramatist. The“ production“' last night,
however, secmedto us to lack the imagin¬
ative touch which made the Stage
Society’s rendering so interesting. No
doubt the smallness of the stage was re¬
Isponsible for ethe propinquity of ihe
Taristocrats to the canaille, who should
have been kept farther apart; and amid
Tall the hubbub we missed the curious thrill
of terror which the imminence of the fall
of the Bastille andethe seizure of power
by the mob evöked when we saw the
piece acted at the Aldwych Theatre.
Stage managers should remember what
a grim thing comparative silence can be#
—how menace can secm to be in the #ir