HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 692, 11 June 1903, Page 11

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.

THE MUSGROVE COMPANY. <• I After a long and successful run, “ A Modern Magdalen,” was replaced on Monday evening by “A Country Mouse,” a comedy of smart London life, of the kind with which recent divorce Court proceedings (as reported in the weekly family supplements), have made us familiar. There is, I suppose, a ready market in London for these comedies, just as there is for the bloodcurdling melodrama, and many other things-that appeal to the sympathies of a class rather than to those of a mixed community. Such a comedy as ‘‘A Country Mouse,” admirable,as it Is, requires a point of view happily not yet common in this Colony, arid it is quy evident that those features in it which make the Colonial merry are not exactly what the author relies on to titillate the ears of the cits of the West End. I am not, of course, speaking for the whole audience at His Majesty s, but it is to be noticed that some of the cleverest and most brilliant dialogue in the play finds no echo in the auditorium. There are many allusions to places and things that fail to reach their mark. The British Museum,, which is evidently a huge joke in smart society, is much too tremendous an institution for an antipodean to laugh at ; but when the country girl describes how the monotony of rural life was varied by magic lantern entertainments, we were all on familiar ground, and could guffaw with any Londoner. The story is excessively simple. It describes the visit of an unsophisticated country maiden to the metropolis, the seige that was ’ >o her heart by a young man already deeply entangled with a married lady, and her remarkably quick submission to an antiquated duke, clearly for the sake ot the position. We are left at the end struggling with the suspicion that the Country Mouse was, after all, not so innocent as she pretended to be, and on thinking it over regret that we were betrayed into feeling any sympathy with heri Miss Stewart makes the damsel just a trifle too babyish, but nevertheless, Angela is the only really interesting character in the comedy. The rest are placed in the cast to give her relief, and the office is obviously not wholly and unalloyedlv congenial. Mr Harcourt Beatty, as the gay dog, who wanted to be on with the new love, &c., is sprightly, and tin parts delightful,-.hut the role is not good enough for him. Nor are the others much more happily placed.

They all do their best, but it is like the best of a champion tennis player at a ping-pong tournament. The dresses and the stage setting, if is quite superfluous to say, are exquisite.