HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume IX, Issue 693, 18 June 1903, Page 11

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.

“ ARE YOU A MASON ?”

If you were to divide the price of admission by the number of laughs produced by Mr Giddens and his friends at His Majesty’s, you would find that you had not been able to purchase the hilarious mood at so cheap a rate for many a day. Nor must you measure the cost by the joy you get while the curtain is up, for you will probably go on twitching your lips and tightening your facial muscles for the rest of the week. Any man who wants more for his money than Mr Williamson gives h jm on the 'present occasion is a usurer, or a sweater, or some other form of social pest, who ought to be confined to a. diet of religious tea meetings for twelve months without the option of a fine. “ Are You a Mason ?” is a mirth provoker of the first order, and Mr Geprge Giddens, Mr Cecil Ward, the Misses Mollison, Munro, Kingston, and Pearson, and the other ladies and gentlemen of the companv have entered into a compact to run it for all there is in it. Being conspirators of long practice, their nefarious scheme comes, off in the most approved style. Plot there is none, and nobody asks for it, or would notice it if it were there. A most unworthy youth has promised his lovely wife that he would imitate the example of her worthy pa, and join the Masonic brotherhood during her absence on a visit to the country. He forgets all about it, however, though he professes to have kept his word. The mother-in-law, who henpecks her husband on the strength of an old love affair of his, is nevertheless very proud of the fact that her spouse is Worshipful Master of his Lodge, though as a matter of fact, he, too, is a fraud and a deceiver, and no Mason. This, with a few other more or less probable incidents thrown in makes the plot, and the great joke springs from the circumstance that each of the Masonic frauds believes the other to be a genuine brother of the Craft. Mr Giddens 1 is delicious all through. Unless Amos Bloodgood were to play the part of George Giddens, it would be impossible to find a parallel for his acting. No respectable elderly gentleman, with a past, and a reminiscent wife, and an awful falsehood wearing him down could behave except in the manner adopted by Mr Giddens, whose only fault! is that* he makes,, it hard for all who come after him. Mr Cecil Ward, as the dashing, but deplorably bad young man, is the same genial, lovable Ward as of yore, and the audience are not half so hard upon him as they ought to be considering how shamefully he deceives his beautiful wife ; and, indeed, seeing how ready Miss Mollison herself ia to forgive him, this isi no wonder. The ladies, and particularly those I have grouped together at the beginning of this notice, owe so much to faces and forms, and to Art, which gave them their gowns and the other mysteriNatUre, iwho endowed them with their ous things that make up their toilettes, that they can never hope to satisfy more than one creditor. There are others, but space will not let me cram their names! in here, and they must wait for another occasion, consoling themselves meanwhile with the reflection that they are thoroughly appreciated. The scenery, etc.,, is superb, but then we should be awfully disappointed if it were anything else. “ Are

You a Mason ?” is said to have broke up the Australian drought ■ with us it ought to check the development of the influenza, which is due about this time.