NOTES BY PASQUIN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1834, 14 January 1887, Page 28

NOTES BY PASQUIN.

If there is going to be a quarrel between Messrs Williamson, Garner, and Musgrove and the playgoers of New Zealand, we shall suffer perhaps more than the triumvirate, and the thing will be altogether lamentable. It will injure the prospects of the stage in this colony not a little. Yet there is something very like a breaoh at present, and all upon a matter of money. The public deliberately turned their back upon the production of " Jim the Penman," the bvst modern play I have seen for a long time past— a playj too, acted in a style that would have been creditable at the London Vaudeville. Although business has picked up a little since then (Saturday last), the houses have never been up to the deserts of this unusually excellent performance. ' ,i

Personally, I am inclined to think that Messrs W., G., and M. are making a mistake in insisting on playing through New Zealand at Australian, not New Zealand prices. They come to Borne and decline to conform to Roman ways. Of coarse, if it be a fact thai full houses at oar customary prices will not serve to make the tour payable, it is another matter. In that case the conclusion is forced upon as that Messrs Williamson, Garner, and Musgrove have sent as too good a company — a company better than we are able to support, and that is a very humiliating and painful admission to anyone who has the welfare of the stage at heart. I hope it will not come to that.

If by any means this company could have been made to pay without disturbing the scale of prices fixed by custom here, the management should have followed that course. It must be remembered that we were promised ""The Mikado " at Xinas, and playgoers are a little bit aore over this disappointment. They would not have minded paying opera prices for opera, but they have had any amount of comedy lately and they kick at paying extra for that. ' That this feeling of dissatisfaction does exist is a certainty, and as a consequence the strongest company that we have seen hero for many years past is being comparatively neglected. " Jim the Penman " is a remarkable play — remarkable chiefly for its strong motive, although the characters are also striking and well marked. Domestic dramas and domestic tragedies are various and familiar, but it is not every day that we encounter so startling and dramatic a situation as is set forth in this play. Here us a man, — James Ralston, — rich, charitable, universally respected, the husband of a charming woman of strength and nobility of obaraoter, the father of children who have been reared in luxury and are now about to commence, well equipped, the battle of life. The son has just completed hia university career, the daughter is engaged as the play opens to young Lord Drelincourt. Thus Ralston could scarcely stand more fairly with the world. He moves in the best society, he is generally sought after, and his social successes have just been capped by an invitation to enter Parliament. Yet this man — the nature of whose resouroes is unknown even to his own family — is a criminal ; a professional forger of rare skill, who has gained wealth and position by his peculiar ability in this line. He is none other than the' notorious Jim the Penman, whom the police have been vainly endeavouring to hunt down for years past. Of course Ralston does not prosecute his craft alone. He does not inquire, aad plot and forge and utter unaided. He is the skilled craftsman upon whom an organised gang of swindlers depend for handsome profits. Only one of this so-called " company " is introduced upon the stage, Barou Hartfeld, who seems to b » a leading spirit in the concern and to have been the first to discover and turn to account Rabton'fl, extraordinary .aptitude. So far, it must be evident enough that we have excellent material for dramatic development. The successful criminal surrounded with friends and family, whose life is one daring He, isanovel and striking figure. Readers of " The House on the Marsh .will at once observe that the figure is not entirely unfamiliar, but there is evidence that Sir Charles Young's play was sketched, although not written or acted, long before Miss Florence Warden, took the public with her story. " Jim the Penman " is. indeed not a creation of the dramatist. Such a notorious forger did actually live and did have a similarly successful career, although whether Sir Charles Young's model, was the German Pullinger or the even more famous Agnr, alias Seward, is a matter of speculation. "Jim the Penman,'* too, does not owe its novelty asa play entirely to its central Hgure. There is. Captain Redwood, the gentleman detective, moving in good society and possessing the entree^of the best houses, whose intelligence and social advantages seem to be at the service either, of the London police or of a firm of private,. inquiry agents. We have had fashionable criminals upon' the stage before, but it is hard to remember when we had a fashionable detective.

Space dooa nob. allow me to follow out in detail the plot' of this admirable piece and describe the, means by which Mrs Ralston discovers the terrible secret of her husband's life, or the excellent passages between the criminals Ralston and Hartfeld, orvthe new and effective " business " 'given to the gentleman detective,. But reinforced by MißS 'Agnes Thomas and Mr Maltby, the company ( are fit for anything, and they played "Jim the Penman "in a manner that put all their previous efforts in the shade. To say a.', few words about the acting: No more finished and thoroughly artistic performance ihah the Mrs Ralston of Miss Agnes Thomas can be desired. It was full of feeling and quiet intensity. The actress' methods art uniformly good, and her effects are gained just as in the case of Mr Titheradge, by the unstrained use of the legitimate machinery of art. Especially striking was Mips Thomas' acting during that long pause in which she compares letter and cheque and discovers her husband'b infamy. Her facial expression here displayed vividly the emotions that would pass through the mind of such a woman as Mrs Ralston at Hach a terrible juncture.' Mr Titheradge gave, what we are instinctively ready to accept t as a true presentment" of what a criminal of James Balaton's type so circumstanced would be. There is a natural tendency to sympathise with the man during the earlier scenes, owing .to the mere force of his contrast with the harder and more repellant .scoundrol Hartfeld ; but this fittingly disappears' iu the later scenes with hia wife. Here we realise more clearly what James Ralston actually, is and what he has done. In his alternate moments of despair, of anger, of weakness, and of brazen audacity, Mr Titheradge aptly ,pourtrayet\ this man — a criminal who olung but to one thing, reputation, and who ehrank from ! but, one i^ing, not the anguish of his unhappy wife, but exposure in the eyes ofi €he world he lived for. Mr An6on again gave evidence of hi? .versatility by • an exceedingly clever piece of b&atfac&r afcting as Beron Hartfeld*-

Claude Melnotte, the same writer goes on to explain, belongs to the dear old yellow covered days of romanticism, when Art swung on the front gate and called on the silver moon to roll on (which, by the way, you will remember, she always did). He does what every ardent youth wants to do ; not what every sentimental and rational youth ought to do. If we like him at all it is because he becomes a poltroon before he knows it, and plays the hero with a resounding rhetoric, never suspecting that he is a fraud before the law. And Pauline, so madly loved — she never prizes him till she finds out what a magnificent liar he is. But to preserve the golden atmosphere we must bring a romantio Claude. If he doesn't enwrap himself with the illusion of young blood, and pour the' wine of passion into the tankard of his talk— it's no use. Mr Coghian's Claude, when in the full paroxysm of the Great Canoodle, is a little perfunctory. He strikes you very much as a man will who has been saying these things to a good many Paulines, and has worn the trick down fine. It hasn't got the bloom of the "first and only.'' His account of the deep vale shut in by Alpine hills, is like Carlyle's account of the ballet. He doesn't believe in the deep vale at all. It isn't in his fervid fancy. It's all in his eye. But nevertheless that vale does exist in every young brain, and is just as much of a verity to young hopes as the Vale of Cashmere is to a boardingschool miss, or the vale of tears is to an old maid. I have quoted so much because there is a good deal of interesting common sense in this American writer's estimate of Claude Melnotte.

" The Mikado " has been revived at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, New York, and is doing as good business there as at the Savoy m Lohdon. Sir Arthur Sullivan is said to have finished the first act of the new opera, but it does not seem likely to be wanted yet awhile.

The Shelley Society's latest experiment has been with " Hellas," at the St. James Theatre. The performance resolved itself into a dreary recitation, enlivened only by snatches of chorus inadequately rehearsed. Frederick Maccabe, writing upon the same subject, takes exception to the word " paradise." He says -• — It all depends upon the point of view. There are some men who would thiuk it Hades ; but I suppose he meant the climate, for it is in that respect indeed a paradise. . I was there three years ago, and was kidnapped by some of the feilows who revel there, who had determined I should take part in an orgie in that portion of the island beyond the Pali of which he makes no mention. I can assure you that his indignation is fully justified, and that the sham civilisation is only a superficial gilding which hides the unchecked licentiousness which M. Renan describes in " L'Abbesse." Permit me to express my appreciation of the clever and truthful description of Pendragou and to sympathise with his wish that " for once the truth, the whole' truth, and nothiDg but the truth, could be told." Mr Charles Wyndham is feeling the pulse of the London public as David Garrick at the ( 'riterion. In the extravagant farcical business of tho second act Wyndham, the unmistakable li^Li comedian, is of course splendid, but the real motive of David Garriok is essentially, romantic and sentimental, and Wyndham has not done wisely to try this business. Mr Fleming Norton is said to be doing remarkably good business at Home.

" Pendragon " (Mr H. Sampson) editor of the London Referee, who has just returned from his travels, has been writing in the plainest language about Honolulu, which he describes as a " sensualist paradise," and Maccabe, the ventriloquist, has been backing him up. Pendragon declares inter alia that there is no doubt whatever that men who at home in San Francisco lead sober lives, and virtuous lives, get in due cour&e tired of so doing, and come over to these islands in dozens and scores for the purposes of drink and dissipation. And speaking in conclusion he says :—": — " Let the medical journals tell of wonderful way in which contagious disease of European origin spreads and grows and grows and spreads under a tropical sun and amid tropical habits until, in its present scrofulous immensity, its original type and comparative mildness- are altogether forgotten. If ever there was a writer who preferred to dwell upon the smoother and more peaceful side of things, and to admit that the Sandwioh Islands possess (outwardly, and before close contests are applied) all the attributes of the Happy Valley, that writer is none other than he who now addresses j'ou and who regrets he should have referred, no matter how remotely, to disease or other unpleasantness. There is certainly nobody on board the vessel whereon this letter is .written — or elsewhere — who feels more sad than I do \o realise that this.EJen at first sight is h. very Faudoinonium of wickedness, a monster plague 6pot. morally as well as physically a perfect realisation of the fableß about Dead Sea. fruit, lovely without and rotten within. And ,0, so rotten ! But the truth must be lold ; I 'tell as much of it as I dare, and wish that for once the wbofo 'truth and nothing batttib truth might be here'tbld by me."

' an effort- indeed .which, cannot be, too- highly praised, and Mr Maltby introduced himself at once as a comedian of uncommon ability by his impersonation of Captain Redwood. It was a well studied and perfectly executed performance from first to last Mr Cates, as Percival, played with manliness and feeling, and' Mr,- Stanfield, Mies Annie Taylor, Miss Fischer, Mr Calyert, and the other member's of the company' who went to make up a, very complete cast, all deserve complimenting upon their efforts. It was in fact a. singularly good play singularly well, played. , They are smiling in London, and in America too, over Boucicault's , advertisements of his return to the States after an "enthusiastic reception " in England for bis comedy H The Jilt.!' It used to be the fashion when a play failed dismally to advertise " The * success of the season; Crowded and enthusiastic houses. Money turned away nightly," and Mr Bondcault evidently thinks it is the fashion still. But to refer, to the terrific slating London critics gave " The Jilt " as "an enthusiastic reception" is rather a good joke. Mr W. S. Gilbert contributes to the Christmas number of the Sporting and Dramatic News an essay on theatrical affairs, which he calls " I Expostulate." „- . Frank Harvey's play "A Ring of Iron" is running at the Olympic. The Gaiety will probably be the house chosen for Miss Mary Anderson's next London appearance.

Charles Coghlan gets a tremendously big salary as leading man to Mrs Langtry, but his Claude Melnotte is not .pronounced entirely satisfactory. He plays the part as if he had a contempt for it, which very likely, he has. A man with clear matured perceptions is very apt to feel in this way about Claude. Anyhow Coghlan's demeanour in the part reminds an American critic of the Bishop, of Rumti-Foo, who took dancing lessons before he attended the Pan-Anglican Synod.

" The attitude's considered quaint," The weary Bishop, feeling faint, Replied : "I do nol Buy it ain't, But time, my Christian friend."