HADDON CHAMBERS'S NEW PLAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5700, 20 October 1896, Page 2

HADDON CHAMBERS'S NEW PLAY.

The height of the silly season does not at first sight sound a promising date for the production of a new play, but the Adelphia is not as other 'West End houses. It has an August public of its own, made up chiefly of cheap ■"'trippers" from the* provinces, and hag been known to do better business at this unfashionable time of the year than at Christmas. Of course, however, the first night audience on Wednesday was not up to September or October mark. "Boys Together" is not half such a strong and original play aB "The Fatal Card." Mr Chambers forswearing novelty has reverted to the most familiar Adelphi methods, and simply reset several good Old situations in fairly freßh scenes and surroundings. Thus Mr Terriss is onue more a sorely persecuted soldier hero, Mr Abingdon, who has never forgotten a thrashing received from him in boyhood's happy days, being the extra - coal - black and coward villain. In Act I. most of the characters are in a Southampton hotel, through the window of which we can see the transport which is to convoy them to the Soiidan. What professionals call "comic relief" abounds, but tlie story does not move much till Miss Millward, who represents a fetching widow in love with Captain Villars (Terriss) discovers that her first husband Forsyth (Abingdon) still lives. When the cwtain rises again the captain and his comrades are in captivity in the hands of a lieutenant of the Mahd in the Soudan, which fact furnishes opportunities for two very picturesque and effective scenes — a city in Soudan, and a tract of the desert. It is here that the most exciting scenes of the play take place. Hassan, the Mahdi's i'anatical lieutenant, has caused to be scourged and put to torture one Fula, a trader, to compel him to divulge the hiding of a treasure ; the money falls into the hands of Forsyth, who witli the connivance of a rascally German adventurer, Rudolph Klein, hides it in the tent of .Villars and then treacherously denounces the latter as tho purloiner of the money. This results in the torture of Yillars, who is fastened to a rock where the scoundrel Forsyth mocks at his sufferings and leaves him to perish, but he is ultimately rescued by Miriam, the wife of Fula, who cuts the cords. In the third act we are once again in where the slanderous charges of Forsyth have so blackened the name of Villars, now supposed to be dead, that his brother officers refuse to be present at the unveiling of a monument to his memory erected by Lord Harpenden in his grounds, but the situation is suddenly changed by the reappearance of Villars, alive. What follows mainly concorns the long drawn pursuit of Forsyth by the victim of his malice, who has sworn to kill him. It would bo impossible to follow all the windings of the story from this point. It must suffice to say that when the terror stricken Forayfch, now utterly broken down by drink and habits of disissipation, is finally tracked down in a pass in the Austrian Tyrol, Villars's hand is finally stayed by the intercession of Ethel. Her explanation, moreover, of suspicious circumstances that have turned his heart against her serves still further to dispel his gloomy views of life, and he determines to let his persecutor live. Finally, however, For-syth perishes in a treacherous attempt to hurl his generous enemy over a precipice. Whether Ethel and her lover Were bound, under those circumstances, to endeavour to save the aggressor from the abyss by means of a rope seems certainly questionable, but » even to this point does Villars's newlyawakened spirit of forgiveness extend. Mr Terris plays Villafs in his inosji flambuoyant style, and rants a good deal. He and Mr Abingdon are hardly off the stage from beginning to end, but 'Miss Millward has hardly anything to do. The piece was enthusiastically.received, and Mr Chambers bowed acknowledgments in his best juvenile manner. Nevertheless I am afraid "Boys Together" will not have a prolonged, run. Clement Scott always down on Haddon Chambers, " Blates " it roundly. That would not matter o£ itself, but none of the other critics seem specially enthusiastic.