“TWO BROTHERS; OR, SITHORS TO GRIND.”

New Zealand Mail, Issue 691, 29 May 1885, Page 10

“TWO BROTHERS; OR, SITHORS TO GRIND.”

Some years ago Messrs Tinsley Brothers, the well-known London publishers, issued a novel bearing the above title. The play presented Monday night is a dramatisation by the author, Mr George Ralph Walker. The story is said to be a true one. Two orphan boys Tom and Joe Stammers—after dividing their very small store of money, separate to seek their fortunes. Tom’s road leads to wealth and independence ; Joe’s to abject penury, with the accompaniment of a seissorsgrinding wheel, by which he manages to support himself and a helpless daughter. Tom marries, but loses his wife, who leaves an only child behind, and in order to provide his daughter with a mother’s care Tom marries again. The stepmother is of the generally accepted stage type —cold, heartless, and persecuting ; and in order to escape from torture Eleanor, the step-daughter, tries to discover her uncle, but only to find that he is the old scissors-grinder. Eleanor had often befriended the old man, and she accepts his home with its accompanying poverty ; but soon turns the ruined tenant into a comfortable dwelling place. In the character of Joe Stammers, Mr George Leitch made his audience forget 1 his own identity ; he was simply the old scissora-grinder. His pathetic interviews with his helpless daughter ; his hearty friendship for Ted Bluff, the village blacksmith ; his leaning upon his niece, after she assumes her place iu hi 3 household ; his interviews with his brother’s wife, “ the Queen of Sheba,” as he terms her ; and his final interview with his long-lost brother, for whom he always kept a chair by the fireside ; in all that he does and all that he says, Mr George Leitch is unmistakably an artist, and his audiences are likely to retain pleasant memories of him. Mr Robert Vernon, who took the part of the brother, Tom,- sustained the character admirably, Mr Jewett, as the village blacksmith, looked a horny-handed son of toil, but his clean, well-shaven face and his white aims were hardly in keeping with his check shirt and leathern apron. Mr C. Thompson

(Lord Templemore) and Mr Frank Harcourt (Mr Hackute) had not much to do, but they made very effective figures for the stage canvas. Miss Maggie Knight, as the heroine of the piece (Eleanor Stammers, afterwards wedded to Lord Henry Templemore) was all that could be wished for—natural, graceful and modest ; adapting herself with a cheery air to her altered circumstances, and like Mark Tapley, always finding out the bright side. There are some fine outbursts of indignation against the cruelties of her stepmother in the play, and she did ample justice to them. In the scene at old Joe Stammers’ house, wheiein she exclaims, “Was I proud, my lady stepmother Yes, and I’ll build a new and surer foundation for it, and I’ll commence this day,” and in many others, there was a pleasing departure from the common-place style of acting which playgoers have so often to put up with. Miss Kate Douglas (as Mrs Eglantine Stammers, the stepmother) was very effective, and so well did she perform her part _ that she was recalled before the curtain and hissed. Miss Gwynne Herrick (the daughter of old Joe Stammers) was natural and unaffected, but appeared to more advantage as the helpless occupant of the oarriage-chair than in the after scenes, when she is restored to health, and becomes the affianced of the village blacksmith. Miss Herrick marred the artistic impersonation of the character by too readily leaving her chair and appearing before the footlights to share in the general applause. If the chair could not have been wheeled near the footlights, the curtain might have been easily raised. Miss Carrie Davis (as Finette) made up the group of characters.