"A WOMAN OF IMPULSE."

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 185, 5 August 1913, Page 6

"A WOMAN OF IMPULSE."

DISCREET MELODRAMA. *A Woman of Impulse." with which the Hamilton-Plimmer Company opened it« season last night at His Majesty's Theatre before a "fairly large audience, h nifldly melodramatic. It is so very different from the sort of thing to which the company has accustomed us that it takes some little time to adjust one's focus. We prefer the company in comedy, but that is only a matter of taste. I There is no doubt that there is still a large proportion of theatre-goers who think the evening wasted if they have not been thrilled at least once during the performance, and while one person"., money is as good as another's, managers would be foolish if they did not cater for these people. The this impulsive person, about whora'Victor Widnell has written a play, mainly concerns a secret. The heroine is the ambitious wife of a cabinet minister. Her father stoal3 plans from the colonial office, a theft which is supposed to imperil the life of the leader of an expedition, this leader being the son of the cabinet minister's best friend. The theft is brought about by a foreign fanatic under the impression that he is helping '"his beloved country." This individual gets the wife 'if the cabinet minister under his thumb. The woman goes through various troubles to shield her father. There are several exciting moments in the play, treading closely on the heels of time-honoured melodrama, but the Hamilton-Plimmer combination may be depended upon not to overdo the thing. The really weak point of the play is that the niison d'etre of the heroine's sufferings is the fact that she has kept as a secret 'from her husband something which should not have been a secret between man and wife. You realise this fatal weakness when the fanatic, at a moment's notice, seeks to -end the wife of the secretary of state for the colonies of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland away into some unheard-of place the other side of Europe to aid in the escape of one of the fanatic's friends, some cheerful assassin whose attempt to remove the tyrant prince has set all Europe in a flutter. This is the frankly melodramatic touch of tho "Woman of Impulse." There arc four acts—-rather a lot of ground to cover such a thin plot as we have—and the spaces between the exciting episodes are filled in with the sort of comedy one would expect among people who 'move in cabinet circles. The comedy hardly fits in altogether too satisfactorily with the melodramatic dash, but nevertheless it is in these scenes that we like the company best.

The company contains several people who are veTy well known to Aucklanders, and the fact that tho audience was pleased to see them again was shown plainly by the hearty way in which their first entry was greeted. Chief of these was Airs. Brough. Site took the part of the mother with an eye to the bank balance w-hen launching her daughter on the sea of matrimony, and took it most successfully. Alost of the work fell on the capable shoulders of Miss Beatrice Day as Lady Langford, who was a woman of impulse in name only. With such a solid, doting husband, it would have been the first impulse of an impulsive woman to do the most natural thing in tbe world, and tell him what he should have known from the first. She handled the harrowing scenes with the restraint one would naturally expect from such an experienced actress, and when the improbabilities of the play were lost sight of she made l.ady Dangford's sufferings almost real. Another old favourite was Mr. Harry Roberts, who joined the company recently. He took the pa-rt of the foreign fanatic Navourac. who is equally as well-known in West End drawing-rooms as he is in associations where they arrange for assassinations ("for my beloved country"). Ho was best in the latter scenes where the fear of that burly and uncompromising person, the London "bobby,"' shakes some of the fanaticism out of him, and lie becomes somewhat human in the effort to save his patriotic skin. Mr. Winter Hall played very naturally as Sir Matthew West, the friend of tho" family a,nd father of the man whose death was supposed to have been brought about by the theft from the Colonial Office. Mr. Harry Plinrmer as Sir George Langford, •had a congenial -role, especially in the earlier scenes, where he simulates the indulgent husband. In the minor part of the last of the noble line of Challaces. with a strong iiavour of brandy and water about him. Mr. Arthur Styan did well what little be had to do. There were possibilities about the happy-go-lucky character of Jack Jeffries, and many of tleni were seized by Mr. Sydney Stirling. The minor parts were satisfactorily filled. ''A Woman of Impulse" will be repeated until Friday night, and on Saturday it will be replaced by "Dr. Wake's Patient."