"A PAIR OF SIXES"

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 90, 16 April 1917, Page 3

"A PAIR OF SIXES"

FARCE IN THREE ACTS.

As performed at the Opera House on Saturday night, "A Pair of Sixes" was a rather brilliant instance -of how a really good company can achieve success with an indifferent play. "A Pair of Sixes" is the veriest farce, but it has been constructed on' the extensive principle of the concertina, and, like that instrument, too, it might become a most dismal, most melancholy, thing if ill played. The time was long, long ago when it was customary' to precede a serious play with a farce, and, besides, was there not an "'after piece" to follow one such play ? Use and wont are rather against the three-act farce, unless it be remarkably well played. There is more than a suspicion that "A Pair of Sixes" was specially concocted for the benefit of that personage for whom managements; are so solicitous, and whom they have designated "the tired business man." However, it possesses, that saving virtue of any play, farcical or otherwise, a plot of which a synopsis appeared in The Post on Saturday; but for the rest, it is an exceedingly boisterous, high speed, whirling sort of farce, with never a quiet moment in it—and certainly not a dull one on Saturday night. It may. be a standardised, machine-made article, turned out on an approved formula, but it made everyone laugh and keep laughing on Saturday night.' and there is a genuine general public demand for goods of that sort. Here is the fitting place to refer in terms of the warmest praise to the art displayed by every member of the cast. Each showed that he, or she, rightly understood what the occasion required. All together skilfully steered the farce over and without touching the shoals of silliness. With an incompetent company, "A Pair of Sixes" could be an atrocity. The theme of the play is bickerings between partners in business, and about the business. It is pardonable then, if playgoers should compare "A Pair of Sixes" with "Potash and Perlmutter," so rich in humour, so natural, so probable. The. former play, on the other hand, almost overstrains possibility. But, after all, what does that matter; what does anything matter in these serious and sometimes depressing days, so long as people can be made to laugh, and be kept laughing for a full two,and a-half hours, and that the slightest trace of indelicate suggestion by word or gesture. Mr. Robert Greig's own buoyant personality (to say nothing of his laugh) is such as to render him entirely independent of adventitious aids of that description. He is big enough, capable enough, merry enough, to obtain great effects without, anything of the kind. He- could make a success of a play with a cast of one. Mr. Bramston (although his part fitted him rather loosely) proved himself to be,a decided acquisition to this or any^ other comedy company. No doubt the'full aroma of an American farce can only be extracted by Americans born playing to their o\vn American audiences, a farce like "A Pair of Sixes." This was to be inferred from the performances of several in the cast. Mr. Guy Hastings, as the lawyer Vanderholt, for instance, gave a capita! reading of his part, but it did not seem quite like the popular conception of a smart New York lawyer. The ladies, too, did not seem like Americans so much as Englishwomen. But everyone entered heartily into the spirit of the play, and "let himself go." Those who should know say that both Miss Beatrict Hollowav, and Miss Violet Yorke—the former as the fiancee of, one of the partners, the latter as wife of 'the other—were superbly gowned. Their dresses certain.ly were a striking feature of the play. The smaller parts were well played, upon accepted and conventional lines, notably that of "Coddles," a domestic, by Miss Marion- Marcus , Clarke. ,"A Pair of Sixes" may be prescribed with safety in any case accurately diagnosed as "the blues." Sufferers who go to see it tonight and succeeding nights will, no doubt, testify to its efficacy in complaints of this kind. , '