The Harry St. Maur Company.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 5756, 30 April 1890, Page 3

The Harry St. Maur Company.

V OW^t Habry St. Mattb, our exchanges tell ''■'■! usj isi" a highly finished actor who has rey ceived wide experienco, and as he is sup- ■._•■ ported by a. very 'powerful company^ so a trjsat is in store for all lovers of dramatic i wit ojq Friday and Saturday cv enings next. . "Jito the Penman," the piece to be staged the first nighfc of the season is a famous playvttf; 'Sir ' Charles Young and it had a successful run in London,, and has also beenprodueed in Melbourne and Sydney with marked success ? '.Mr Si Maur having been specially engaged for the purpose by Williamson, Garner, and Musgrove. In "the part? of James 'Ralston, the forger, Mr St..: Maur will sustain his original part '' which suits Kirn admirably^ and gives him an opportunity to display that artistic ! acting for T which he has made such a name for himself since his arrival in Australia i from London. The plot of the play deals twith'.the; career of a man who in his •younger days has been a forger, but at the time the action of the piece, commences isoliving happily with his wife and family. is skilfully worked out, and no better test of the success of the playwright can be found than the fact that the audience is fiiade to sympathise with the character that, from a moral point, of view, is least Worthy of sympathy. ..\ A Southern paper speaking of the performance says:—-" Jim," otherwise Mr Ralston, who, possessing a fatal facility for imitating handwriting and signatures, has been, utilised by a gang who have by his means obtained enormous sums of money through successful forgeries which . have been executed and uttered with such consummate skill that for a long series of years the perpetrators have escaped detection. "Jim " has also committed a little 1 forgery, on his ovrn account by which he obtained his wife who was previously engaged to another man, but he succeeded in separating them by writing a letter from each to the other expressing a desire that • the engagement between them ; might cease. Mr Ralston, as he is introduced to nis audience, is living in comfort and '[ luxury, with an excellent wife, a son (Mr f I Berkeley) who is in the na. vy,. and a v daughter, (Miss Mayo) who is just engaged . to Lord Drelincourt (Mr Stilling Duff). . Everything seems outwardly prosperous •■ Ttrith him, but there is a canker gnawing V at his heart both in a mental and physical "sense. Npw, the reader may imagine what Via wide scope here presents itself for an -able -actor. : Joyous and bright at first, then gradually growing gloomy and v Irritable and nervous as he gradually sees the toils closing on him. Horrified by '•Jb.eiiig"brought suddenly face to face with *" the former lover of his wife, whom he has so cruelly wronged, first of all by separating him from his early love, and next by making him the victim of one of his cheque forgeries, and thus depriving him -'''-.of his fortune. I/onging to give up his old evil ways, he is yet compelled to continue' ill ; them by the crafty Baron fiar^feld(Mr Kennedy), between whom a(nd himself there are enacted some of the .most- powerful scenes in the whole (foibia.j But the, crowning se^ne is that *in which his .wife discovers the author of the forgeries by which a separation was brought . about between her and Her old lover Louis Percivai (Mr Frank Gerald), and accuses her husband of the cruel deed. In this the emotions of the audience were most powerfully played upon, and it. was almost a relief when the ■,» ■ agene was over, and some moments elapsed ■'""*' lwfcre the audience sufficiently recovered themselves to show their appreciation of that 'which they had just witnessed by calling Mr Saint Maur and Miss Seymour before the curtain to receive their plaudits. To the final scene, where he drops dead from heart disease after a struggle 1 with the Baron, Mr St. Maur ably sustained a character than which there can be few more difficult to successfully act. Of Miss Florence Seymour we cannot speak in too high terms. She seems to have hot the slightest difficulty in portraying all the vicissitudes of the life of a woman living in luxury and apparent contentment,, yefc with a wound in her heart 1 which. though it. had closed had never Tiealed. The .masterpiece, not only of her own acting but of the whole drama, was whan by an accident she discovered who was the writer of the forged letters. Not a word was spoken by her as she sat at her desk and compared one handwriting with another, but nob a word was nccea- ' sary to show what was passing through her mind, as the awful fact dawned upon her. For nearly a couple of minutes she , held, her audience enthralled as they ' watched her silent agony. It was a splendid piece of powerful acting, and there is no need to refer any further to the manner in which Miss Seymour per- .- formed her most trying part. !