"THE FOREST" AT ST. MARTIN'S THEATRE. 8.30-2.30.
MR. GALSWORTHY'S new play cannot be described as enter- taining. Several .men die of exhaustion or are killed by natives in an African jungle, while several others in -London make large sums of money by speculation on the former's chances of survival.
The object of the play, it is said, is to prove that there is absolutely no real connexion between the fortunes of the men who are doing the real work of civilizing a continent and the financial promoters who hope to make money out of the explorers' vicissitudes. The truth of this assertion Mr. Galsworthy demonstrates with, all his usual emphasis and precision, but naturally in doing so he also demonstrates that the two halves of his play have no more connexion than explorers and financiers. Hence the interest flags.
The production has the intelligent realism and skilful casting that we have learnt- to- expect from-the Reandean Company. There was at least one delightful moment. The chief capitalist's secretary (Mr. J. H. Roberts) had spread a false report that the explorers had got through safely, and had discovered a diamond field, in order to send up the price of his master's shares, so that the latter could " unload " them upon an unsuspecting public, before the slump came at the news of the explorers' deaths. The secretary asks if, after all, there may not be some truth in the report that he has spread—the explorers may really be safe. The capi- talist (Mr. Franklin Dyall) answers him with a sort of gigantic leering wink, which is _simply inimitable. Perhaps we cannot praise it more highly than to say that even at the end of the fourth act of The Forest it penetrated to the audience's
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