"MONEY" AT DRURY LANE.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1174, 8 July 1911, Page 10

"MONEY" AT DRURY LANE.

WHY' IT WAS PLAYED. . That Bulwer-Lytton's "Money" was chosen for the command performance at Drury Liinc was a high tribute to our Victorian comedy, says a writer 'in; an English .paper. Tho British drama.'was born before 1840; it has made como.' furtive efforts to persist since that year'; but that our greatest actors, when they content to appear in' the fame cast, should chooso ".Money" is not. without signific-. an.ee, and it is worth while to ask what arc (ho, merits or demerits whicli have! ensured'to Buhyer-Lyttou's plays this strange "survival. Why-is-it-,-thfn,-that-"Money" should bo chosen to represent our .drama on ;i great occasion? ilany-neoplo have asked that .question. Because it is as gob'd a theatrical machine as was ever'invented, lwcaus.? it gives a dozen actors and actresses a better chance, of distinguishing themselves than half a hundred masterpieces. It.was devised for tho stage, and tho stage alone, by a fearless executant who could play upon any instrument that ambition put in his hands. Lytton never breathed the.pure spirit of comedy. Ho scrupulously excluded frnitt' his dr.imat.io works any knowledge of life which ho ■may have possessed; ' But lie knew how to suit actors with effective-parts. Though, Alfred Evelyn is far divorced from reality, he gives-his interpreter, a chanco of romantic sentimentality w-Jiich no ardent actor would disdain, and .of which Jlacrcady, first feen in the role, took full advantage. And then what a band of comedians the play provides, each touched with his own eccentricity! Sir John Vosey, or Stingy Jack, .who in his pursuit of wealth constantly overreaches himself. Of course, there is exaggeration in his every'-utterance. "I love him as a son— and J look to. his money as my own," says lie,- and everybody knows perfectly well that if.in life he lielicvcd those words ho would never have uttered them. And Mr. Stout, with his'echoes of Disraeli and his assurance that ."there's only ono' man can save the country, and-that's Popkins"; and. Glossmore, the pompous peer,' "arid 'Sir "Frederick Blount, .the.' beau, "one. .of the'new class-of. prudent-going gentlemen.; who, not having spirits and constitution for tho.hearty excesses of their 'predecessors,'. entrench tlieilisolvefl in the dignity of a ladylike laifaour," and, best of all, the excellent primes (with a dance), who still laments, his sainted Maria—have they not all jilst that quality of absuvdilv ,vM-l, t | lo gfcjllod actor can turn to account?

Hero. then, is ihe Msfiin! merit of Lytton's "Money": its fitness for production rin (he stage; and wisely was it determined! to vovivo the costumes nnd furniture of 18t0. Hamlet might piny his part without incongruity in a frock-coat and a chimney-pot hat. A dramatist Mich as tliis one, who is nf a far older fashion than Shakespeare or the Greeks, demands imperiously and-before, all things archaeological exactitude.