"OUTWARD BOUND” PLAYED

Taranaki Daily News, 14 November 1930, Page 3

"OUTWARD BOUND” PLAYED

STORY OF ANOTHER LIFE. • , •" T.«. • 11 *■' ' • J.’ .' SUTTON VANE’S DRAMA. ' The possibilities of the supernatural and the world of death are handled with skill by Sutton Vane in his drama of unknowns voyaging to an unknow.n port, “Outward Bound.” A company of Nbw Plymouth amateurs presented a play-reading of the work at the Work--, ers’ Social Hall .last night on behalf of the Victoria League and in aid of the ; Plunket Society’s Baby Day Fund. The awakening, of a mixed company to the fact that they were dead was one of the peculiarities of the play. What would people do who awoke to find themselves dead? These were sailing—for somewhere —to meet someone. • One was a young man addicted - to whisky, another a delightful old snob, with little enough to be proud of but the hyphen in her name, another the young curate who believed he was taking a health trip, yet another, a charwoman and an honest soul, who did not know why or where she was travelling, and finally the preoccupied business man, upon whom death must have come as an awkward delay in his money gathering. The steward, travelling for ever with the ship, the examiner, and the young couple, ‘’Halfways” they were called, were part of a curious company. The characters were: Mr. Colin Knight as Scrubby, -Miss Q. Gibson as Ann; Mr. J. H. Shcat as Henry; Mr. Eric Robbies as Mr. .Prior; Mrs. J. D. Hay as z Mre. Cliveden-Banks; Roy. Fordham. Clarke, Rey.. .William Duke; Mrs. W. J. Reid, Mrs. Midget; Mr. H. W. Insull, Mr. Lingley; Dr. R. J. R. Mecredy, Rev. Frank', Thomson. The members of the cast were uniformly good. Mr. Bobbins made the degenerate young Prior an interesting study. Mr. Insull certainly managed to convey the correct impression of the business man, w’ho even at the last endeavoured to produce a good balancesheet for the examiner to-inspect. Mrs. Hay had a great deal to do :as. the self-important lady who held that even in death there were degrees in society. Mrs. W. J. Reid was entertaining in her playing of the Cockney, Mrs. Mid- . get, an honest, humble woman. Miss ’ Gibson and Mr. .T. H. Sheat were very satisfactory as the “half-ways” people who had lacked courage to live and Seemed doomed to wander in the /hereafter. Another of them was Scrubby, whom Mr. Colin Knight made very real, the one character who essentially kept, the idea of supernatural influences before the rest of the company. The two clergymen, one naturally fitted for the part he acted, completed the cast. The younger remarked, at first with some satisfaction, that his work was over once he was dead. Given < the chance by the examiner, he took up that, work again to do it even better than before. Indirectly, without being pointed. the plav seems to teach a lesson. The idea of a hereafter and .a reckoning, a weighing of true human values, is a curious subject to discuss, but the author of “Outward Bound” has given it a peculiar significance. With a fair share of humour and a knowledge of human nature he has made it very interesting. - ■ ■ >