Footlight Flashes.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XVI, 19 October 1895, Page 486

Footlight Flashes.

By

The Prompter.

THE Brough and Boucicault New Zealand season for the present year of grace will, I confidently prophecy, beat the records already set up by this famous Company. ‘ The Importance of Being Earnest,’ and ‘ The Case of Rebellious Susan ’ have been produced since the last issue of this paper, and since both these fine plays will presently be produced in Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin, I should like to make a few remarks upon each of them. As everyone knows, though his name is carefully ommitted from the bills, ‘ The Importance of Being Earnest ’ is the latest—or last —and the most brilliant production of Oscar Wilde. After witnessing the play one can comprehend very clearly the stupefying surprise which his down fall must have caused those who knew the man only through the play, or as the brilliant talker, poet and critic. Absolutely inoffensive, free from all obectionable teaching, ‘ The Importance of Being Earnest’ is the work of the Dr. Jeykell half of Oscar Wilde —the half, that is to say, whose brilliant wit, whose inimitable conversational powers, whose scathing satire, and smart cynicism fascinated ‘ brainy ’ London for so many years ; the half of Wilde to whom we owe art colours ; the half who won the Newaigate prize at Oxford, and who wrote some of the most exquisitely finished sonnets produced by latter-day minor poets. The other Wilde—the Hyde—of this strange creature does not appear. The animal whose crime is neither to be mentioned nor thought of, the man who wrote ‘ Dorian Grey,’ does not once appear, save indeed in those flashing paradoxes which he scattered in all his work, good and bad, pure or impure.

‘ The Importance of Being Earnest ’ is a jeu d'esprit, a clever absurdity which anyone may see and hear, and which anyone with a taste for satire, for cynicism (mainly good-natured), will thoroughly enjoy. The brilliance of the witty dialogue cannot be described, and it would be difficult to praise it sufficiently. Every sentence has its point. Sharp and exquisitely polished satire and whimsical paradox follow in one ceaseless flow of brilliant conversation. Of course no single set of persons ever talked as these people do ; their smartness is supernatural, but it would be mad to quarrel with the author for saying too many clever things, and for affording us too many chances of laughter. For it is wit that is provided. If it were mere foolery, punning for instance, one might tire. As it is one sighs heavily with regret when it is over.

The burden of the acting falls mainly on the shoulders of Mr Brough and Mr Boucicault, the rival ‘ Earnests,’ and these two Stirling actors give one more proof of their truly splendid capabilities and admirable versatility. The performances of both is the perfection of fine farcical comedy acting. Not a point is missed, but the intelligence of the audience is never insulted by having them flung at its head as if it were unable to appreciate anything not thus forcibly delivered. I earnestly commend to the notice of Southerners Miss Hardy, who in this play takes the part of Cecily. A very charming little actress, with a delightful face and figure, and a quick and artistic grasp of her parts, Miss Hardy has a fine future before here. The story of ‘ The Importance of Being Earnest ’ Ido not propose to tell here. It is sufficiently flimsy, but as I have said, as innocent as Mrs Grundy could possibly desire. I cannot too strongly advise anyone with a quick appreciation of witty sayings to see the play at all costs.

‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ gave place on Saturday evening to ‘The Case of Rebellious Susan.’ This is a very pretty comedy, and by far the best thing Henry Arthur Jones has done up to the present. The moral of the play—if it can be said to possess morals, which is somewhat problematical—may be indicated by saying that it is in the nature of a counterblast to such books as Sarah Grand’s ‘ Ideala ’ and ‘ The Heavenly Twins.’ The problem Rebellious Susan sets out to elucidate is the proper constituents of a sauce for ganders. According to her uncle, Sir Richard Cato (Mr Titheradge), whose twenty-five years of matrimonial experience—in the Divorce Court —entitle him, as he thinks, to speak with some authority, the desired recipe is not to be discovered, for the simple reason that there t’s no gander sauce. Sue, however, thinks differently, and at the close of the first act we find her quitting her husband’s roof iu the full resolve never to return until her quest has proved successful. If such an act of wifely insubordination is ever justifiable, then certainly the long-legged and speechless idiot which Mr Dorrington makes of Jim Harabin, the husband, is as good a justification as a lady need desire. In the second act we

are introduced to the ghost of Lady Susan’s ‘ adventure,’ a rather lively ghost in the sequel with talk of Cannonstreet station and an immediate flight to New Zealand. Thisis, however, put a stop to by Sir Richard, who dismisses the lover, and finally succeeds in reconciling husband and wife on a basis of letting bygones be bygones. To this the lady is further induced by the arrival of a messenger from New Zealand, who reports that her lover became engaged on the voyage out, and is now happilymarried. The matrimonial adventures of Mr and Mrs Fergusson Pybus (Boucicault and Miss Temple) from the moment of their first aspiration to ‘ stamp themselves on the age ’ until the arrival of Pybus with a black eye, presented him free gratis and for nothing by the domestic butcher, and the arrest of the lady on a charge of aiding and abetting the female telegraphic operators in wrecking the Clapham post-office, provide a secondary source of amusement which keeps the audience in a continual simmer of laughter throughout the evening. It is needless to say that the comedy was splendidly staged and brilliantly played. The Greenwood Dramatic and Comedy Company open their New Zealand tour at Abbott’s Opera House on Wednesday, October 23rd, when will be staged for two nights Augustin Daly’s celebrated drama, ‘ Leah, the Forsaken,’ in which Miss Maribel Greenwood will play the part of the persecuted Jewish maiden. The plot is laid in the times when persecution of the Jews was general. Rudolf, the son of an old Magistrate in an Austrian village, falls in love with Leah, a beautiful Jewess, who is travelling with some members of her tribe, and, on account of the feebleness of one of her friends, is obliged to take shelter in an old hut near the village. They agree to forsake their friends and go to America, but Rudolf confides in his father, who takes a renegade, Jim (Nathan), into his counsels. On the suggestion of the latter, it is agreed that money shall be offered to the Jewess to forsake Rudolf. The commission is entrusted to Nathan, who, being a professed Christian, is anxious that at all hazards the Jews shall be got out of the village. The money is innocently accepted by one of the wandering tribe as a charity unknown to Leah. Nathan is seen and recognised by the old man, whom he murders, and attributes the death to a thunderbolt. Nathan reports that Leah has accepted the tribe. There is mutual denunciation and cursing between Rudolf and Leah. He marries Madelina, who loves him. Leah departs, but returns five years afterwards, takes the curse off Rudolf, and his child denounces Nathan and dies. Miss Maribel Greenwood has much to recommend her to the public. She is young, of handsome presence, and as painstaking as she is talented. During the season ‘My Sweetheart, ‘Two Orphans,’ ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ‘Camille,’ ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ and other pieces will be staged.

Sir Henry Irving has commissioned a famous Academician to paint a large picture by Shakespeare for the foyer of the Lyceum. £l,s<x> has been divided amongst the heirs of Wagner as their share of royalties for the performance of the great composer’s works during the first half of the present year. With the Patti reappearance as Rossini’s Rosina fresh in the memory, it is decidedly interesting to hear that the management of La Scala at Milan have determined to celebrate the eightieth birthday of ‘The Barber of Seville ’ next spring by a gala representation. It was on February sth, 1816, at the Argentina Theatre at Rome that this opera was first produced. ‘ The Barber ’ was not performed at La Scala until September 16th, 1820, and since then it has been given at that famous opera house upward of 245 times. A unique occurrence in dramatic authorship, and on that is without precedent in the annals of the stage, is that W. S. Gilbert’s name has appeared on the London playbills for a quarter of a century without a single break.