"THE NAKED TRUTH."

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7542, 20 April 1886, Page 3

"THE NAKED TRUTH."

Mr Darrell's friends must regret that he did not open here in a play that enabled the public to judge his powers at their best. "The Naked Truth " is a drama (with no Australian surroundings) which is immeasurably superior to "The Sunny South" and without some of the conspicuous faults of" Transported for Life," the last piece produced. It is a play worked out upon well-considered lines-not perhaps brilliant, and not perhaps wholly original throughout, but still a play o f strong mter, est and of consistency. "The Nakprt Truth," indeed deserved to le witnessed by a far larger^ audience than gathered at the Princess Theatre last night, and is far and away the best work that we have yet seen from Mr Darrell's pen. The opening scene reminds the spectator of nothing so much as Dumas' "Lady of the.Camellias"; but this may be unconscious on the author's part. Muriel is a second_Camille with a happier fate awaiting her. She leaves Adrien, the man to whom she is joined by every tie save one-wedlock-m B rder to advance his interests-indeed, to save him from pecuniary ruin. In the second act she reappears an outcast and starving, and is an agonised witness to Adnen's dalliance with another woman Next she interposes to save him from death at the hands of a cowardly ruffian, and is herself overpowered, cast into a river, and rescued Act 3 is entitled " the great play scene," and brines with it a slight flavour of Charles Reade's "Masks and Faces," and a more pronounced flavour of Leah " m the curse scene with which it culminates. But it is a well-worked-out scene for all that. Muriel, an actress figuring in a tragic role upon the stage, directs her most vehement rhetoric to Adrien, who is seated in a stage box, and who forthwith rushes forward clasps her fainting in his arms, and vows that she is his^for evermore. It is necessary to explain that Adnen, at the mandate of his father, has since the severance of his former tie married naturalTv 7^ Unl c- Phayi"a D°mestic tro^ naturally follow this emeute. Eunice, a witness of the scene at the theatre, is unwillingly com! pelledto fly with oneVollaire, a man who has been persecuting her for some time pa t Her husband, himself on the eve of SgW wife, follows tho pair and finds them—their flight interrupted by the break-down of their 3:V eSMW- EuQice is dead, but her would-be betrayer is not, and with him Mr Darrell thereupon fights a most one-sided dud and apparently kills his antagonist. VoSaire fehowever, not dead after all -and unnr, ihl v ' covery of this Adrien re'soTu^ deE Is" father and announces his determiat'on to marry Muriel, to whom he has already bee° reunited. Thus Muriel's fate is fnrmW +1 v^^rms^;3 forcibly played.but the man is a poor creature spite of all his graceful heroics. Probably m" Darre I means him to be so. In the first scene he deliberately scouts Muriel's prayer for Z riage although she is the woman whom throughout the play ho professes to love Ho has .sufhcie.it spirit to leave his wife's side and rush to embrace his former mistress upon the sta-e of a theatre, but hot sufficient to marry her while ho was yet a free man. When he Lrn« of his wife's flight, he himself wasTn the very act of consummating the crime of wife desertion but he tollows the fugitives in*tante,-^k alHhe fierce emotions of a much-wronged man The so-called duel which ho lights upon ovS-' taking them is nothing more nor less than averv cowardly butchery, in spite of the prelnniZv .straw-drawmg;between the opponents; a deliberately shoot his unarmed and re ing enemy like a dog was an act< that could only hi reconciled to notions of fair play by a m.° u n ro f easing the extraordinary code of moS/ o .Adrien Devereaux. There aro some keen and caustic cuts at conventional morality through out this play upon which the author must be compl,mehted,but a spectator is bound to ,ay that Adrien himself is not a shining light

The demi-monde figures prominently in the piece, and Mr Darrell has occasionally been a little incautious in his dialogue, but there is nothing to which real objection can he taken. There are one or two good characters too. Nick Grubber, the representative loafer—a cowardly, cringing hound, brutal withal—is well drawn' and well played by Mr Patterson. Mr Darrell's performance, as already intimated, was uniformly good; and Miss Annie Mayor plaj'ed perhaps better than she has hitherto done, especially in her denunciation scene in act 3.' Miss Mabel Tracey played her scenes as Eunice Phayre with some power. Mr J. P. West was admirably at home in a small edition of the crushed tragedian; and Mr Jerdan, as the villain, and Mr Duff, as Paul Bruce, also played ;heir parts well. Miss Chrissie Peachey and Miss H. Mayor did justice to small parts; and Mr Oily Deering, who had not much to do, was nevertheless funny as Bobby Bruce, a popular comedian. Mr George Forbes had his usual part, and was irreproachable iv it; and Miss M. Prescott (Mrs Deering) gave a humorous study of a dishevelled nursegirl. "The Naked Truth" will, be repeated tonight.

Ihe North Otago Times states that it is not often that we hear of such remarkable prolificness in sheep-breeding as that which took place on the farm of Mr A. M'Naught, Awamoko, last season. From 322 halfbred and three-quarter-bred ewes there was a produce of 480 lambs. Of these 424 lived and thrived, 56 succumbing to desertion by their mothers and to other causes. The number of twins and triplets to make up the above increase must have been more than usually large. If New Zealand could calculate on a natural increase of sheep at this rate, it would take three times the number of vessels to carry frozen meat that are now engaged in the trade—that is, if the surplus over our own requirements was to be kept as it is at the present time.

—In the 17tli century the French people amounted to 38 per cent, of the whole population of Europe, and in 1759 to 27 per cent.; it now hardly attains the figure of 13 percent.