Chtutrrs sub weir.
The plot of a one-act piece, produced on Monday at the St. James's Theatre, might up to a certain point serve as a model for our farce-writers. Rarely do we see a number of amusing incidents so neatly linked together, and so pleasantly illumined by a gentle ray of sentiment. A packet of immense importance to a married lady, inasmuch as it relates to a pre-nuptial affair which she would conceal from a jealous husband, has fallen into the hands of an eccentric gentleman, who makes it his business to be a "che- valier des dames." The difficulties which arise before he can place it in the lady's hands are incalculable. Having entered her house almost by accident, and before he knows that she is really the lady of whom he is in search, he is compelled to put on a livery, which he finds on a sofa, to prevent the suspicions of the husband, while the husband in his turn puts on the coat of the knight-errant, which contains the unlucky packet. In vain is the monster of jealousy induced to change the coat; the pocket-book in which the letters are enclosed is snatched up by him under the false impression that it is his own, and is then locked up in a casket Then come new misfortunes. When the wife coaxes the hus- band out of the key, the "chevalier" has sent the box to the locksmith's, and when the box is brought back the key is not to be had. A destruc- tion of the box by fire, though the pocket-book contains a considerable sum of money, is at last thought of as the only possible remedy, desperate as it is ; and it is a great mercy that the fire in the hearth is extinguished, since within the box is a large portion of the husband's fortune, plus the money in the pocket-book. At last the packet is released ; the proof of the affair to which it relates is effectually destroyed ; and an explanation is given to the husband,—which is, however, less satisfactory than might have been expected from the ingenuity displayed throughout. If a little of the inventive talent which MM. Marc Michel and La- briche have displayed in Is Chevalier des Dames—which, by the way, is one of their most recent productions—had been employed in building up the farce lately produced at the Haymarket under the title of To Paris awl Back for Five Pounds, we should have had a much more satisfactory result. There was all the atmosphere for an excellent farce. The action takes place among the humours of a railway hotel and an electric tele- graph ; and there is plenty of that bustle which is so much appreciated by an audience when it represents some well-known reality of the day. Then the author has a fund of verbal drollery at command ; and is pow- erfully supported by the eccentricities of Buckstone. But with all these qualifications, there is something so very ordinary, so very much the re- verse of surprising, in the working out of the plot, that, though the piece succeeds, it leaves somewhat of a blank in the mind. L'Etourneau, proving a favourite piece at the St. James's Theatre, has been revived there with great effect. The acting of Ravel as the scape- grace who is searching after the lost letter, and is screwed up to a tor- turing anxiety when his efforts fail one after another, is one of those ter- rific displays of emotion which may remind old playgoers of the great scenes of Emery, though in characters of a kind very different from that of the gallant Parisian bourgeois. This remarkable performance shows that Ravel is not a mere farceur, who has got by rote a number of "quips and quirks and wanton smiles," but an artist capable of representing any degree of human passion.
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