"PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK."

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIII, Issue 14349, 15 November 1910, Page 3

"PASSING OF THE THIRD FLOOR BACK."

The Hamilton, Plimmer and Penniston Co.- will :u>l>«ar the Theatre Uoyal next Friday and Saturday. On tits* opening night (Kri JVlv) they \\l. play 11 Lovers' .Lane," and on the socon'd night they will stage that mystM ions play Tiic Passing ot the Third Floor' Back," which is totally different from any of Jerome K. Jerome's works NeZealand has_ seen lioforo. In the. hitter we are introduced to a shabby-genteel boardinghouse in London—a house or deceit, disl loncsty, and discontent, in which selfishness poisons tiio atmosphere, and good thoughts come without welcome and depart vnthout regret. Thro comes in the mysterious -halflights at dusk a gentle-mannered stranger with a sanctuary voice and a face like a benediction. A hack room on the third floor is the host that can he offered to the new hoarder. "Before his arrival the house lias been made miserable, not actually by poverty and misfortune, but by bitterness of tooling and sourness of heart, and by the fai.se pretences of men and women who have forsaken truth and forgotten the principles of of sincerity and straightforwardness. The degenerate human types in the bonrdinghouse include a iundhuly who cheats and makes a science of meanness. a cad, a vogue, a callous married snob, a shrewish wife, a lady who paints her face and wears false hair, a slavey without ths pronnvting of a soul, and a girl who is willing to jilt her lover (a poor artist) so that she may live in luxury as the wife of a coarse creature who has made his money as a betting man. To each person in tu rii the geutle-uiaimered stranger brings understanding and clearness of vision. As he talks softly to her, the cheating landladv is reminded of her better past, of the time of her life when she was "at home on third Fridays" before her tiring struggle for existence had broken her faith in her fellow'-creatures. The slovenly waiting-maid, from the work'ouse, is awakened to a sense of self-respect and a recognition of virtue and goodness, and. listening to the kind-faced new boarder, she throws away the tawdrv imitation emerald ear-rings. The snobbish Jariy, "cousin to Sir George Twc-edlc Bart.," is brought" to see the silliness of her imagined need that .she must wear deep mourning for her late jUa.iestv, the Queen of Naples," and t;, realise her cruelty in casting off her sister who had gone wrong. In sense a miracle is worked, before the eyes of the audience, in a modern hoardmghouse that is to sav tli° o~ a celess occupants of the place are" so influenced by tJie presence of "the stranger and by his acts and words that in every instance "the better Syrfi >t,is s<ta '' •» -