A PLAY OF THE SOIL
AUTTJMN FIRE," BY T. C. MURRAY.. " Q " THEATRE.]
MANY years ago I remember a performance in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, of Mr. Murray's first play, Maurice Harte (a noble play about a young priest who found that he had no vocation), which moved me more than anything I had ever seen up to that time. I have been waiting for Mr. Murray ever since. Autumn Fire is, I believe, this fine dramatist's third play, and I suppose I shall bring down coals of fire on my head if I say that I consider it a far better piece of work than Juno and the Paycock. Like all the best plays of the Irish soil, the story of Autumn Fire is simplicity itself and tragedy, stark, grim tragedy, follows comedy as the rain follows the sunshine across the hills of the most beautiful country in the world. Only the Russians and the Irish seem able to get so completely into the skin of their countries that their plays, especially their plays of rural life, stagger one by their lack of pose or artifice. Mr. Murray gives us a poignant tale of jealousy that holds you breathless till the last minute, a father's jealousy of a son and a son's jealousy of a father, for both are in love with the same girt; and lurking darkly in the background is the bitterest jealousy of them all, a daughter's jealousy of her young and pretty step-mother. This tragic figure was magnificently played by Miss Kathleen Drago. The third act reaches heights of great power,and real lyric beauty. Owen Keegan, the father of this stormy household, has had a stroke ; suspicion is festering in his mind like a malignant canker ; nothing is left to him, he cries out in his agony, except "The Son of God." The beautiful lighting of this scene (good lighting is a ,feature of the " Q " Theatre) added greatly to its effect. Autumn Fire is a fine play, and it was finely -acted. I should like to apologize to Mr. Shine and to Miss Vila- O'Connor for the intolerable behaviour of the audi- ence on the night I was there. One is accustomed to bad manners, sudden epidemics of coughing, seat-slanunings and so forth in the West End, but at a Repertory Theatre of high endeavour one does not expect them. No one has better cause than I have to be grateful to the average " Q" Theatre audience for its kindly tolerance, so that I dislike all the more having to say that on this occasion the audience nearly ruined the play by their whimperings, gibberings, sneerings and other savage barbarities. I hoped that Miss O'Connor would refuse " to take a call," as Miss Angela Baddeley once did in similar circumstances at the same theatre. It is the only way to treat such people. E. S. A.
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