Theatre Royal.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5190, 22 December 1884, Page 4

Theatre Royal.

«. " MA.MMON." There was a large attendance at the Theatre Royal on Saturday evening, more especially downstairs, when Mr Sydney Grundy'a " Mammon " was played for the second tirua. The principals in this moving and clearly-writton play are well nigh perfect. It would hardly be possible for an actor to reproduce with more faithful and artistic appearance of reality itself the idea tho -playwright has conceived in the character of Sir Geoffrey Heriott, than is done with such success by Mr Vernon. Every effect which contrasts of bearing and demeanour can give, and every detail by which more vividness and actuality can be lent to the impersonation, are obtained by him without ever departing from his usual refined and polished style of acting. Again on Saturday night was his playing watched with eager attention, and tho trying scene at the close of the second act as vigorously applauded as before. Miss Ward, in depicting the ill-used Lady Heriott, has to rely upon talents quite different from those to which she is popularly supposed to owe all her reputation. Instead of the scorn, defiance, heartlessness, the unnatural, unfominine traits of a Stephanie de Mohrivart, or the majestic unscrupulousness and overbearing masterful ways of a Sarah Churchill, she has to deal with tender womanly sorrow, and a love that refuses to be killed by any ruthless treatment from a harsh, unfeeling husband. In this she shows herself as thorough an artist as in the delineation of those less attractive features in woman's nature with which her previous performances in Christchurch have made us familiar. The lovers •in the story are played, as in "The Queen's Favorite," by Misa Watts Phillips and Mr Montgomery. Violet Heriott's recommendations to the favours of th^ audience are a sweet girlish love and truat in father and lover, and a trusting, affectionate attachment far her mother, which braves prospective hardship and poverty without a moment's hesitation. Her constancy and simplicity are portrayed with a good deal of quiet effect by Miss Phillips, whose acting is fresh, natural, and unaffected throughout, . and adds greatly to the completeness of the domestic picture. Her lover is not very brilliantly played by Mr Montgomery, who is inclined to be stiff and wanting in ease and abandon. At times, however, he forgets himself, and the consequences, as when he quarrels with Sir Geoffrey, are most favourable. Nearly all the subordinate characters are clear individualities, and none more so than the villain of the piece, Parker, the secretary of the unprincipled speculator. Mr Lawrence represents the more odious servant of an odious master with a consistent obsequiousness and quiet subservience tnat makes him positively detestable. From the very first you know that the soft-footed, soft- voiced, irreproachable clerk, ready at every emergency, is going to turn out a scoundrel. Every glance, every bow, every rubbing of his hands betrays him. By the end of the play you could hang that villainous, unctuous, clean-shaven traitor without the least compunction, if you met him under convenient circumstances. Mr Lawrence is to be congratulated on a clever bit of studied acting. So is Mr Fenton on his impersonation of Mr Chinnery, a kind of Yorkshire Sir Gorgius Midas, a vulgarian of the first water. The author seems to have limned him in the strongest outlines possible without going into caricature, and Mr Fenton follows out the design. He is as coarse and illbred as a strong Yorkshire accent and ignorance of every trace of good manners can make him. His wife is rather loudly dressed by Miss Flora Anstead for a" Frenchwoman, even of the doubtful character and disreputable antecedents of Mrs Chinnery, but, as is always the case with this actress, carefully and effectively played. A rather br6ken-down and woeful-looking editor, who does and says things that few editors of our experience would say or do, falls to the lot of Mr Darvill. Such a feeble, ridiculous personage is hard to play, with any appearance of life and vigour, and Mr Darvill is rather overweighted in the attempt. As on Friday, Miss Ward recited " The Widow of Glencoe," after the play.