"A PRODIGAL SON."

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 38, 13 August 1895, Page 2

"A PRODIGAL SON."

After a fortnight's excellent business, that scenic triumph, "1 he Land of the Moa," made way at the Opera House last night for " Tho Prodigal Son." The new production is a collection of highly melodramatic "situations " and " curtains," strung together with a number of pretty scenes. Some of the "comic relief" is not over-refined, and there is a deaf couple who become a weari. ness of the fleßh long before the last aot, but their moat farcical performance is not quits so faroicalas some of the "serious" business. All this baa been most handsomely mounted. The " Curragh Heads " are two exceedingly pretty scenes, elaborately built up. So is the smuggler's retreat; and the " vision of tho prodigal son " is well managed, and forms a striking picture, even though there is_ no very striking reason for its appearing juat where it docs, in a ludicrous court scene. How is it that the lnelodramatio court soene is always made ridiculous by forms and procodnre whioh exist in no oourt in the world? Mr. Cathcart has a oongenial character as the venerable Judge Paul, whioh he playa excellently. The Judge has two sons, one of whom he acknowledges through five aota and the other through only one. The last, yclept David Herne, is a handsome and manly eoamp as played by Mr. Keightley. By his influenoe with tho free and independent fisherfolk and several leading smugglers, not to mention the publiohouse interest— the Prohibition party is evidently not strong in tho locality — he succeeds in securing the return to Parliament of his half-brother, Doctor Paul (Mr. Carr), and defeating the Bitting member, Desbrowe Meaaor (Mr. Ashton), a ruffian with one short leg, who, following aertain well-known precedents, has been made a J.P. in recognition ot his crimes and other Party services. The two brothers, acknowledged and nnaoknowlodgei, are in lovo with Measer's daughter, who, having a sconndrel for a father, is, in accordance with melodramatic rules made and provided, therefore an angol, heredity to the oontrary notwithstanding. David, the soamp, aB is usual with the box, is preferred to his reputable kinsman. Lorna Meager (of whom Miss Gill gave a bright and attractive pourtrayal) is, of oourße, also beloved of the villain of the pieoe, who evidently believes that a woman is to be won over by being "well shaken before being taken," and by frequent references to " damnation." He is a cousin of the heroine, one Jarkle Crofter, whom Mr. Leonard made to look a thorough snoak. The J.P. is determined to resent the affront to his Party by ruining David, and as that yonth is made up in the oußtomary proportion of melodramatic heroes— ass 0 - 9 a, common sense O'l— and oommitsforsteries "while you wait," pro bono publtco, in front of a " pub " and in the presence of his enemy, and then fights his brother with a pig-Btioker, and lets the same enemy push them both over a oliff, anyone not a mattoid could predict that he would be put in jail, and anyono who had seen other like dramas would prediot that Larry Meelish (Mr. George Leitoh), a hap-hazard Irishman, would ultimately get him out o) the moss, aud that everybody would be happy oxoopt tho J.P. and his nephew, who, as is tba custom iv melodrama, Js imprisoned in the end. Meantime it proves that the convict ship with David aboard on his way to serve sentence for manslaughter, was wrecked, aud that David wao the only survivor, and that he landed on tbe soene of his onme at Curragh Heads, and lived there for three years, during which period he grew a beird and navor saw a living soul — because a land-slip had rendered the place inocoessiblo — till Lorna and the ruffian Crofter, and Larry as groom, oantored casually up tho unalimbable cliff when out one day for horse exeroiso, and found David's house and sundry cement barrels and a ooat j and Lorna, who, like every well-equipped young woman, oarried needles and thread in the breast of her riding habit in preparation for suoh emergonoies, sat down and mended the ooat of the invisible " unknown"— who hadswum ashore in oonviot clothes. As he had been telling the audience he had seen no one since, his possession of a wardrobe and a frock ooat should have been rigorously enquired into by the police. And just after the visitors left, another bearded individual, who had been shipwrecked and had swum ashore in a dying state, also walked up the inaccessible cliff, and everyone was euro at onoo he must be the oorpse of the other brother, of whose manslaughter, notwithstanding the non-finding of the body, David was oonyioted without evidence by his own father sitting as a Judge in a red robo. The trial also proceeded at great length, notwithstanding that David had pleaded Guilty early and often, and in it the Judge left the be nob. to weep on the nook of a witness. And so it finished. Tho murdered man had been picked up by a ship and wandered round the world for three years without ever striking a post offioe or a telegraph office or a telephone bureau, and then got shipwrecked just where he started from aB a oorpse and olimbed up an unolimbable oliff to die or find hiß long-lost brother. And then Crofter is suddenly' charged andarrastod for attempted murder"' on the oooasion of his pushing Dorohis Paul over the oliff. All this soundß somewhat mixed, but so ib the drama, wbioh will be repeated to-night. Miss Phillips, , as Lury'a sweetheart, was a bright spot in jit, and the .characters were "oalled" moro than ondo.' In consequence of dolor ia tho moroments of the steamer*, "A Prodigal Son" oan only be repeated on two more occasions, ai, the oompanyY leave* 'ion .(Thursday for .Dunedin. ,' . '»■ Pork sauwgei,' 6d' Jot 1 lb, made from grain-fed pork ; order early, Wardell Bros. »n'Soj) I y,sl,'W}ms.rtf W t SlT^)t I .^|- j ,