HUMAN NATURE.

Evening Star, Issue 7420, 16 January 1888, Page 2

HUMAN NATURE.

At the Princess's this evening Mr George Leftch's company will produce the military drama, ' Human Nature.' The play is spoken of as containing many strong situations, the plot upon which it is based being a very interesting one, whilst it is mounted in a most complete manner, and the spectacular effects are especially good. *' Human Natmre' was written by Messrs Pettitt (part author of ' Harbor Lights') and Augustus Harris, and the drama comes from the Old Country with a good reputation, and is of the class of which ' Youth' is a conspiouous example. It is an effective drama, full of strong situations, and constructed so as to keep up a cumulative interest from beginning to end. It is a story of love and jealousy, misunderstanding, humor, and wickedness, terminating in homicide and reconciliation. A striking character in the piece is that of a beautiful woman who has loved not wisely. At some period anterior to the commencement of the story she has married ; the man she has unwisely loved has also married. But there is this difference between the two: that whereas he has married a woman whom he loves, she has married a man to whom she is indifferent. She deserts her husband, and finds her way into the home of the woman, once her schoolfellow, who has taken her place in the affections of the man who once loved her; and, assisted by an ardent lover of her rival, she sets to work to dispossess her of the affection of the man who, to both of them, is all in all. The expedient to which she resorts to accomplish this is old enough, but it serves. The severance is made, and the husband goes off to the wars, believing himself dishonored—the wars being the conflict in the Soudan, where the bravest of all warriors, General Gordon, was sacrificed. Here he storms a city—Khartoum, for example—and finds therein the man who, he has been made to believe, has wronged him. At a subsequent stage of the action the two meet in the burning desert, and, instead of killing him, he gives him water, and saves his life from vengeful Arabs. As the proper acknowledgment of these services, the villain, dying, confesses that the lady was never false at all, but only cruelly wronged. The husband goes back to England. Meanwhile the good wife has been much persecuted by a wicked attorney, who legally takes from her her child, and, having an interest in the child's death, gives it over to the custodianship of two persons who traffic in child-killing or baby-farming. The infanticidal process is not carried out in this case, but the stage effect of child-murder is produced by the deatli of another boy of tender years. The serious episodes of this interesting drama are tempered by the introduction of two pleasant persons one a lawyer's clerk, Mr Horatio Spof kins, who has a talent for verifying, and the other a little serving woman of the kind you cinnot well help falling in love withal. The lawyer's clerk is in love with the serving woman, and the serving woman is in love with the clerk, and love passages between these two are diverting. Of course the husband is united to his wife and child again, while the woman who has done her best to ruin his life is confronted by her vengeful husband, and by him sent to her account. Of the mounting and scenery we are led to expect equal effect to those introduced into • Harbor Lights,' and even scenes still more startling. Mr H. C. Sidney and Miss Alice Norton (who have already established themsclres favorites here) will sustain the leading characters of Captain Temple and Nellie Temple. 'Human Nature' will only be played for three nights, as the company close their season on Wednesday night.