STAGE AND SCREEN The Theatre
"Parnell." By Elsie T. Schauffler. At the Gate
I-I- is understandably rare, the law on the subject being what it is, to find a biographical play introducing a public figure of even relatively recent times that is not merely an obituary notice. iu dramatic terms. Yet there are evidently a few dramatists left who are courageous enough to abstain from cultivating the conventional graveside manner and rely for the production of their plays on the enterprise of private thea- tres. Mrs. Schauffier, the author of this very distinguished play, which described the relationship between Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea from their first meeting to his death, MIS one of them. Parnell is not consistently historical, for Mrs. Schauffler (with her eyes open) compressed, altered, and emended in her arrangement of the events of Parnell's life. But her presenta- tion of all her characters, of the policies which some of them directed, and of the events in which they were involved, is con- sistently accurate and honest, and the play as a whole has a dignity, a nobility and a narrative power which put it in a class apart from the average theatrically effective play.
The acting in this production is almost as good as the play itself. Miss Margaret Rawling's playing of Katherine O'Shea is as a whole enchantingly warm, delicate and touching. But in one scene—that in which she and her aunt, Mrs. Wood, call upon Gladstone to plead for Parnell—she surprisingly lapsed into being merely a passive decoration to the stage and left it to Miss Marda Vanne, who played Mrs. Wood with dry, astringent precision, and to Mr. Arthur Young, who brought a lively discretion to his sketch of Gladstone, to gain by them- selves the effect of what was in reality a very well written scene. Mr. James Mason, though his performance became a little . monotonous, accurately produced the effect that was intended for Captain O'Shea, and Mr. J. A. O'Rourke and Mr. Harry Hutchinson were the best of those whose duty it was to dispense comic relief on behalf of the Irish Party. But it is to Mr. Wyndham Goldie's Parnell that the greatest share of praise for the success of this production must go : in subtlety, in intelligence, and in power of evocation this must rank with the few great performances that have been seen in
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