"TONY" AND "HANS."

Auckland Star, Volume XIX, Issue 202, 28 August 1888, Page 5

"TONY " AND "HANS."

(By A.T.R.) ' '

I wao delighted ouce a^ain to see my old friend "Tony," $\s MSpa tH? Boatman,"

at the Opera House last night. In "My Sweetheart" I had always thought that Tony was the gem of the play, the vivacity of Miss -Minnie Palmer as Tina, with all the variety of her caprices and her untiring spirit of fun and frolic notwithstanding, and putting "the old sport "out of the question. As Hans, Tony has developed, and grown, and matured, and become full bloom. Who has stepped into his shoes in "My Sweetheart" I am at a loss to imagine. I can fancy Miss Jennie Lee, (not Joe, oh dear no, but the " Vital Spark"), stepping, into Miss Palmer's little shoes, but another Tony, such as Mr Arnold, is impossible. ■ One might easily get another Robson to act in the Porters Knot. Last night Mr Arnold far surpassed his former self. /A more delicate piece of acting it would be difficult to imagine, and there are one or two situations in the play_ which demand the resources of a first-rate actor. Let any second-rate actor try the lovemaking'scene on the garden seat before a colonial audience and I venture to say that he won't try it a secondtime. Second rate acting here might pass muster with an emotional audience such as one Slide in the Adelphi, London, but colonial robustness is apt to reaent and ridicule anything approaching the mamby-pamby. It is an easy matter to be critical, and I could criticise the play itself, but I will refrain from doing so; for the larger portion of the hostile kind is bub jubilant flippancy. I can only express regret that Mr Arnold has not found a better setting for the lovely pictures of which he forms the soul and centre. How-lovely those pictures are no one can imagine. Every one ought to go and, see for themselves — see Hans with little Baby Coquette and with the noble Lion, the dog see Hans with all the little ones around him joined together with the chords of love and with the Dairy Chain, and it will act as a cure for depression and may even supersede the Golden Chariot in being a perfect panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir'to. ;