KING’S THEATRE.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Issue 1383, 26 October 1916, Page 32

KING’S THEATRE.

“THE BAD GIRL OF THE FAMILY.”

Lovers of melodrama will find everything to their liking in “The Bad Girl of the Family,” which the BrandonCremer Company are playing this week at King’s Theatre, Newton. The piece is well spiced with dramatic situations, and the audience are kept busily speculative all the time. But melodrama tradition never fails, and the most inexplicable tangles are sorted out to everyone’s satisfaction. Bess, the “bad” girl, proves that she is more sinned against than sinning, and sets herself out to save Lord Erskine’s daughter, Gladys, from marriage with the man who has been her (the bad girl’s) undoing. This man and his father, a vulgar moneylender of untold wealth, contrive to be guests at the Earl’s, the latter assenting to the match to retrieve his own fortunes. Gladys Erskine is in love with Lieutenant Marsh, a naval officer, and she makes a bold bid for happiness in direct opposition to her father’s plans. But all in vain. Marsh is given his conge by the peer. The wedding day is fixed, the bride is attired for the ceremony, and it looks as if nothing but a miracle could intervene, when providence steps in in the form of the bad girl, who, heavily veiled, takes Gladys’ place at the altar, and the audience greatly re-

joice thereat! However, things do not end here. Baulked of his prey, the villain—by name, Harry Gordon—sets in operation further machinations, and there is plenty doing till the curtain rings down a finish with the situations all smoothed out to general satisfaction. The part of the bad girl was admirably handled by Miss Mabel Hardinge, while Miss Kathleen Arnold put in effective work as the Earl’s daughter. Miss Alice Rede was convincing as Honor (the bad girl’s sister), and Miss Biddy Hawthorne, as Sally Smithers, and Mr. F. Neil, as Sammy Snozzle, made their parts outstanding ones. Mr. Fred Francis, as the villain, Mr. W. T. Coulter, as the villain’s resourceful father, and Mr Maurice Tuohy as the prepossessing naval officer gave capable portrayals of their respective roles.