PARSON AS PLAYWRIGHT.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 773, 29 December 1904, Page 20

PARSON AS PLAYWRIGHT.

The Rev. b'orbes Phillips is a parson with leanings towards the stage. He coquetted with the theatre when he induced Mrs Brown Potter to recite religious poems in his church at Gorleston ; and Al rs .Potter, who is one of the few really distinguished reciters of the English stage, put on a picture-hat and a spiritual gown, and fairly knocked the Gorleston congregation. Mr Phillips then mentioned a play that he had got up his sleeve, and Airs "Potter agreed to produce it at Yarmouth. Once more the natives thundered their applause- So Mrs Potter told Mr Phillips that if ever she had a season of her own in town she would put up his play, which is called, without any reason that I have been able to ina/keout Isays a well-known London critic), For Church or Stage.” If there had been a mark of interrogation after the title I should have understood that the reverend dramatist was in doubt as to whether his play was most fitted for representation in a play-house or a house of prayer, and in that case I should have suggested an addition to the title of the words “or the Rectorial Study,” and should have experienced no compunction in advising him to adopt the last alternative. Mr Phillips appears to have thought that his play formed a rather daring contribution to the literature of sex drama ; he anticipated that the production would cause a row ; he even gave us to believe that it contained a moral. I have been trying to discover that moral, and if there is one I think it must be that a decent cocette is better than a weak and sensuous clergyman of the Established Church. I can quite believe it, but the fact doesn t affect me m the least. If the lesson he intended to convey had been that a parson can write a better play than a cocotte I should have felt more interest in his arguments. The mere fact that Noel Faber was a parson may cause a flutter in clerical circles —though I much doubt if it will • but it will not affect the play-going public, and it won’t help the chances of the play- Mrs York—she is only Mrs by courtesy, and an actress to the extent of being an honorary member of the profes-sion-falls in love with the much-married Noel Faber. Her love for him, so she declares, makes her a much better woman than ever she expected to be. It has the opposite effect on the parson, who leaves his wife and family to st".’’ with her in her private apartments at the Savoy Hotel. But he is so undecided between going the “whole hog” with Mrs \ ork and returning to his waiting family, that his inamorata recognises what a tvo-pany-halfpenny sort of sinner she has t o deal with, and dismisses him. She does it very nicely. She says, “Go 1 before an unbeautiful finish comes to our love. Abd he goes. And the play ends. No row !