"LUCKY MISS DEAN."

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 79, 30 September 1905, Page 13

"LUCKY MISS DEAN."

It is difficult to know quite what to say about "Lucky Miss Dean" — a journalistic admission which may be excused its unconventionalifcy for the sake of its candour. Mr. Bowkett's "little comedy" has so many qualities of freshness and originality that one dislikes havng to dwell on its tenuity and lack of matter. Perhaps, this summer weather, originality plus lightness will kick the beam. It is better to be amused than thrilled. And one must not, cannot, forget in summing up, that there is the art of Miss Ethel Irving to weigh down the scale in favour of the entertainment. The chief charm about "Lucky Miss Dean" is really its intimate note. It appeals to us to see two young married lovers keeping up appearances on lees than nothing a year. We are pleased to watch them 5 we like to hear of their bloater-paste luncheons, and to see him, in a perfect frock-coat, bring in the dinner steak. We enjoy watching them outwit the bailiffs, and jumping on a table to look through the fanlight to discover whether the bell has been rung by a possible purchaser of his pictures or an applicant for the rent. We particularly enjoy it, becauso Miss. Ethel Irving and Mr. Marsh Allen aro the boy and girl wife. They^are so very fresh and buoyant and real, despite the unreal things they have to do sometimes. • Mr. Bowkett tells his story well, such as that story is. Acacia Dean and Frederick Ware are married. But' sho occupies a tiny Victoria-stret flat on one side of the corridor, and he another, just across the passage. If it were known that she were married,' her paternal aunt and her maternal uncle would stop their separate allowances of a hundred a year, and then there would not even be s^teak, but only bloater-paste. He is an artist; ho has even had a picture — her pdrtrait — exhibited in the Academy. And yet the commissions do not come. So he has a brilliant idea. A newspaper is "spoofed" Ino printing a story of a legacy of £300,000 left to Acacia by an eccentric American who was so entranced by the painting that he bequeathed this fortune to its original, and then conveniently died. In this way, argues Ware, ho will be besieged by sitters anxious to be immortalised, and, what is better, possibly enriched, by the glamour of his brush. But the effect is hardly that expected. The sitters do not appear, but aunt and vncle cut off their allowances, as being ridiculously superfluous. The bailiffs become in this way a much moro pressing danger. And worse things happen. Aunt insists on ordering, on Acacia's account, dresses and hats and lovely things generally. Worse still, two dreadful cousins show a most coming-on disposition, and throw their hearts at her feet. Frederick and Acacia are iii despair. Her relatives are clamouring for a sight of tho lawyer who has the matter in hand. Ware must be the lawyer. Money is an urgent necessity— Ware must find it. The two couiins shall be the milch-cows. Both are trying to win the lady's favour, by hook or by crook — they shall think they are winning it by buying her picture for a most outrageous sum. And, unfortunately, both do buy it, so that he can sell it "to neither. The things which happen through the attempted sale of this painting are of a, bustling farcical nature, which, though too long drawn-out, have yet that quality of freshness which may outweigh tho lack of solidity of the foundation on which they are built. The greatest danger which threatens "Lucky Miss Dear" is that the top-hamper is too heavy for tho hull of Mr. Bowketfs craft. One feels that it is all make-believe, because one is given time to fee", it hi the lapses into lameness which are the inevitable result of a story too thin for a thTee-act p'^ay. — St. James's Budget.