“THE LAUGHING OPTIMIST”

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1928, Page 3

“THE LAUGHING OPTIMIST”

AN AMUSING LIGHT COMEDY. With its plentiful supply of smart talk by smart people, its usual triumph of love over dollars, and its ludicrous situations, light American comedy was postrayed to a small but highly-amused audieime in the Opera House on Saturday night. The title of the piece was “The Laughing Optimist,” and the players the J. C. Williamson London Comedy Company, headed by Mr. Percy H’-tchison. After one had finished laughing at the play and had time to reflect the amazing and rather refreshing discovery was made that in this year of grace 1928 one had been sustained in an hilarious mood without a really suggestive phrase having been uttered. But he would have been a dour person indeed who could have fortified himself against the rapid-fire word bombardments of Mr. Hutchison. As Jerry Howard, the optimist, he expressed all the bounce of the New Yorker, all the irrepressibility and all the cheek necessary to “put over” his philosophy that fear and timidity were the only things that held a man back from success. In fact, he would have been a “one hundred per cent. American” had he but spoken American. The nasal intonation was missing from the voices of the company, though quite possibly most f the audience regarded the deficiency with relief rather than disappointment. Pierce Dawn was once an author who had published some novels showing originality and fine feeling. Of course they had not been very profitable, and, faced with the necessity of providing for a fashionable and expensive daughter and an ambitious and extravagant wife he found himself unwillingly converted into a writing machine for the production of lucrative serial “thrillers.” Even so, he could not keep up with the everincreasing penalties that feminine luxury imposed on his income.

Then into this resplendant, insolvent establishment burst the optimist to shatter a few illusions and marry the daughter, and to banish from the mind of a struggling, overworked writer the fear that the world was no longer in need of his work. Like all virtuous heroes, Howard was penniless and had a hearty contempt for money as the sole object of life. He was therefore not regarded favourably by Mrs. Dawn, w r ho appraised him through the eyes of a possible mother-in-law. The only way to assured comfort and a life unembarrassed by financial considerations was. she could see, to enveigle an oil king into the family circle. John Barron was therefore encouraged considerably. Grown middle-aged in amassing a fortune, he had learnt nothing of the niceties of the refined pleasures of the rich. But that did not matter —he could be taught. How Howard forsook the moneygrubbing atmosphere of Bairoil’s office to launch himself penniless on the world, and how he made some thousands of dollars through an option, secured over two of Barron's second-hand RollsRoyce cars were developments described in a wealth of witty words and repartee. Then, as they could not afford a country home for the summer, Mrs. Daw'n and her daughter luxuriated fairly economically at the island home of Barron and tried to teach him to play bridge and to jazz. In the meantime Pierce Dawn remained in New York sweltering and endeavouring to finish a serial contract. He broke down in health, but eventually, under the irresistible influence of the irrepressable Howard, banished his fear complex, leased his fashionable home at a profitable rental, and moved into an unpretentious tenement flat. There mother and daughter arrived aghast at this emigration from Mayfair. Then, in a fit of pique, the latter decided definitely to marry Barron, despite her love for the optimist. Faced with this ultimatum, Howard failed to apply his own philosophy and became a most despondent pessimist, and it remained for the man he had transformed, Pierce Dawn, to arrange that it was Howard who should marry his daughter instead of Barron. Miss Stella Francis was well cast as the refined girl torn between love for Howard, love for her father and love of luxury and oomfort, without realising their cost or the sacrifices they entailed on the overworked writer, impersonated by Mr. R. Steuart West. He, too, had an exacting role calling first for the portrayal of a jaded, care-worn man, listless in his despondency, and afterwards for the revitalised father and husband who refused to give way to old fears. Mr. West infused his acting with considerable charm of maimer. Miss Frances Dillon took the part of Mrs. Dawn, the ambitious mother, while Mr. E. Rayson-Cousens was John Barron, the socially untutored but genuinehearted millionaire. The former might have been more convincing in her acknowledgement of the changed situations in the last act. As it was, she was not sincere enough in the embrasses she gave her husband and in her acceptance of Howard as a son-in-law.

Miss Alary Brockley, as Clare Clarke, typified the ultra-modern, outspoken society girl, “not-up-to-date but four years ahead.” Other parts were taken by Messrs. Victor Watts Weston, Townsend Wliitling and Leslie Laurier and Misses Dorothy Stallward and John Rogers. To-night the company will play the farce “Air. What’s His Name," described “as a trifle French.”