HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIII, Issue 797, 15 June 1905, Page 18

HIS MAJESTY’S THEATRE.

(By

“ Footlight. )

“ BLIND MAN’S BUFF.” CAST OF CHARACTERS. Sam Coast Mr. Harcourt Beatty Lieutenant Richard Coleman Mr. Malcolm Dunn Steven Carley Mr. James Lindsav Moles Mr. Harry Hill A Footman Mr. Leopold Stach Mrs. Carley Miss Amy Singleton Mrs. Stephen Carley Mrs. Maesmore Morris Lizzie Miss Evelyn Davenport Miss Bella ShindieMiss Amy Willard Phillip Miss Rosie Fitzgerald Christopher Miss Ella Miller Toots Miss Doris Pounds Elaine....:Miss Sybile Miller Eleanor Carley Miss Nellie Stewart On Saturday “ Blind Man’s Buff” replaced “ Pretty Peggv” at His Majesty’s, and to many it made a refreshing change. It is a four-act play by Clyde Fitch, the well-known American dramatist, and is one of those plays wherein melodrama, sentimentality, and farce are commingled and commixed so judiciously that a concoction suitable for all palates is produced. Briefly, it is the story of one Sam Coast, a man who has made his pile by more or less questionable methods of finance. Sam, shrewd business man as he is, finds time to fall desperately in love with Eleanor Carley, a distant connection of his by marriage. Ail the characters, by the way, save the hero, Lieutenant Richard Colem a, suffer from this fact that they are connected in some wav and it would require an expert geneaologist to define the several relationships. Eleanoi' has no time for Sam, but instead is head over heels in love with Lieutenant Coleman. To further his suit Coast decides to bring financial ruin on the whole family with whom Eleanor resides, the idea being, apparthat when the girl is penniless she will jump at his millions. This scheme is a singularly easy one to carry out, because Stephen Carley, Eleanor’s brother and the head of the household, is one of those born gamblers who are ready to speculate wildly on the most slender information. Coleman is ordered to the Philippines, and he goes fully convinced that Eleanor has promised to marry Coast, whose way is thus made easy. Just when Carley is irretrievably ruined, every nennv the household possesses having been swallowed up .a the maelstrom of Wall-street, Eleanor receives a love letter from Coleman, but her joy is sud-

denly turned into sorrow by the news from Manila that the regiment has been ambushed and annihilated by the Filipinos. Coast steadily presses his suit, onlv to. meet with repeated rejections, and ultimately, after giving Carley a good position and pt restoring the fortunes of the family, he retires from the honeless quest, and the play closes with the unexpected return of Coleman and the prospect of wedding bells. Miss Nellie Stewart was quite in her element as Eleanor Carley, the warm-hearted girl who stands by her family in financial ruin and refuses to give up her lover, even when begged to do so by her rela-

five-. Throughout the play she acted in the most natural manner, the contrast between. her intense joy at receiving her first love letter and the hopeless dismay on learning the crushing news of the

disaster to the regiment being cleverly brought out. In Sam Coast Mr. Harcourt Beatty had a part entirely unlike am- in which we have seen him before, and his conception of the shrewd speculator, who is prepared to sacrifice anybody to attain his own selfish ends, was true to the life, the one defect being the make-up. which was not in the least characteristic of the typical American. The villain of melodrama is always impossible. but such a man as Sam Coast doubtless has many a counterpart in every-day life to-day. Mr. Malcolm Dunn, as Lieutenant Caleman, made a very manly hero, although perhaps a little out of drawing in a British uniform. Mrs. Maesmore Morris gave a remarkably good rendering of the 'art of Mrs. Stephen Carley, an otherwise charming woman, whose one foible was advancement in society. Miss Amy Singleton’s Mrs. Carley was an amusing sketch, although there was rather much broad farce in it; in fact the model might have been founded on Johnny Sheridan’s “ Widow O’Brien.” Air. James Lindsay had a somewhat thankless part to play as Steven Carley, the reckless speculator, whose motives were ah ror the best, but did o-ood work in the part. Miss Amy Willard provoked laughter as the chattering, and, to judge by results, incompetent lady h air dresser." The four children played very naturally in their scene in the first act, so well, in fact, that many were found regretting that the author had excluded them from the rest of the play. The piece went very smoothly from start to finish, and there can be no doubt that the production was a very complete success. It was withdrawn last evening in favour of “ Camille.”