30 JULY 1921, Page 17

"AMBROSE APPLEJOHN'S ADVENTURE" AT THE CRITERION THEATRE.

Mn. CHARLES HAWTREY appears in what we are told is a new and great success. The play as a whole is silly, but it certainly has amusing features. There is a "dream scene" on board an Elizabethan pirate ship which I confess to have thoroughly enjoyed. But if any of my readers chance to have seen it they will know what a confession that is. The whole thing is most loosely put together with quantities and quantities of unworked-out plot lying about in all directions. Still, that is better than having no plot at all. Mr. Walter Hackett, the author, should read nothing but Shaw, Ibsen, and Congreve for a year on end, and so perhaps learn how plays should be constructed. The acting, apart from the always able Mr. Hawtrey, was not very good. But like Rousseau, " I feel my heart restraining my pen." Miss Hilda Moore, who played the adventuress, may not be a Heaven-sent actress, but her appearance is so truly magnificent that criticism is, and should be, dumb before it. TARN.