AS GOOD AS CHARLEY’S AUNT.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 939, 5 March 1908, Page 17

AS GOOD AS CHARLEY’S AUNT.

“ When Knights were Bold,” has fairly caught on in Australia and evidently we are in for a treat when it comes this way. The drama.ist is Mr Charles Marlowe, and he has done his work well, albeit the idea of putting back the clock and taking the characters into another and unfamiliar time is not new. “An Old Fogy,” “ A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur,” and other ingenious stores, are on the same lines of he contrast between two dissimilar ages. Mr Marlowe makes his contrast between the twentieth century and seven centuries back.

As an artistic contrast he selects the past age of Richard of he Lion Heart, and, indeed, models all his old- im° cha-

racters on Sir Walter Scott’s “ Ivanhoe.” Sir Guy de Vere, the dreamer and degenerate descendant of the mediaeval knights, “ throws back ” to a combination <of Wilfred of Ivanhoe and Coeur de Lion. The Lady Rowena Eggington is sufficiently identified as Scott’s fair Rowena, the modern Isaac Isaacson re ires back into the dark ages and becomes typical of Isaac of York, one of the unfortunate Jews who had their teeth drawn whilst they waited. Kings were the dentists in those days, and they would not wait long for their exorbiant fees. Miss Isaacson dissolves into the past as Rebecca, a modern dean becomes the monk of old, and as there is a modern Sir Brian in the first act, it need scarcely be added that in his “past,” seven hundred years back, he would have been the De Bois Guilbert in the story of “The Wizard of the North.” The cracker of “ ches nuts ” materialises as his ancestor, the jester of the old time, and other dream parallels are more or less cleverly indicated. It is said to be as great a laughter maker as Charley’s Aunt.