"THE TERRIBLE MEEK."

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12772, 25 May 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

"THE TERRIBLE MEEK."

Before the curtain rises on "The Terrible Meek," the latest big production at the Little Theatre, New York, the lights are turned out and the audience held for a few moments m complete darkness. Out of this gloom conies, presently, a woman's moaning; then a man's voice; then the va guest glimmer of light, as if from a covered lantern, and two men, air officer and one of his soldiers, aro talking. There has been an execution. The broad cockney of the private and references to the price of empire suggest .India and South Africa, and the spectator wonders whether it is some poor "native" -or another Danny Deever who's swinging overhead. The officer is peculiarly shaken, and his growing doubts and questionings as to what the man did arid whether after all he was- really guilty, at last go .too far. for the soldier's blunt habit .of duty. After all, says he, duty's duty,' and orders is orders. * He'd kill the Lord God himself if his superior officer. told him to. . " - -

He goes, and the woman's moaning, is heard again., It is her son. they have, killed; — the' son who had only kindness aiid sympathy for everyone. As her heartbroken monologue progresses, a gaunt something glimmers vaguely against the blackness, and presently the ikct dawns on the startled audience that they are looking through a thin veil of contemporary words at the hill of Calvary on the night of the Crucifixion. , The officer, overcome at last with conviction of his guilt, begs the riiother to forgive hini. The son is not "dead," he comforts her, and the whole world will be different because of him — a v»orld where sons will not be murdered, where \yars may some day cease— "the earth is His. The meek, the terrible meek, the fierce, agdriising riieek, are about fo enter ripon their inheritance." In the midst of their exhaltation the soldier comes back. There is another job to be done— more hilling— and the officer. has beeA ordered to take charge of it. He. . refuses and tells the dumfOunded private to take that, message back — he refuses to obey orders. Darkness closes about him completely now ; through it his voice is • heard— "How simple it all is after all !"— then the light comes. In the full glare of the sjun stands' 1 a Roman centurion, a wo -nlan,. and f above 'them, against, the lurid sky, the, three crosses of Calvary. .= The effect of this picture on its first Audience was startling. The long wait ah pitoh' blackness before the voices were first heai'd' had demoralised them j One ana n had lit an ' automatic cigar lighter, -spme had, giggled and applauded, a few hissed. There ,was considerable nervousness all through the wordy action, but the almost physical shock of this final tableau left the audience speechless. They sat m. dead silence during the several slow movements that preceded the tjurning up of the lights, and filed out m silence, scarcely speaking until they -vf'ere again m the daylight of Fortyfourth street.

■ Mr Charles Rami Kennedy certainly lias courage of a sortr— a courage, m this case, considerably above his acconipliahrhent. Primitive or very simple folk have their Passion, plays, which seem a llatural and appropriate expression of their faith; or such a subject may' be presented on the more stage through the imagination of some ' great poet- or teacher.

The Little Theatre, however, is not a primitive place, and Mr Kennedy is not a great poet or teacher. And if the matinee audience was silent, it was not because it was spellbound by Mr Kennedy's gemus, but because it felt that these were terrible realities ,_£o vivify work so comparatively commonplace. '