THE THEATRE.
Mr. Hughes's The Sister's Tragedy the management have got hold of an interesting, if imperfect, play.
Perhaps it was the first play, A happy New Year, that Tut us in a bad humour. A family party are sitting watching the New Year in. They long to know the future.; to them enters the Old Year, who refuses to tell them what is to come, it is sure to be unpleasant. The dock strikes, in comes New Year. (In parenthesis, I feel I must here register .a protest against dancing children ; they ought to be in bed. This was such a charming, pretty child, too, in this -case, and almost inevitably being turned into a spoilt, self-conscious mine before our eyes. It seems about as civilized to have children on the stage as it would be to pass them through the fire to Baal.) The child tells the family party they 'had much better not try to know. They insist and are, as we expected, all informed of the sudden and bloody massacre to which they are to come. The play falls completely between two, even three, stools. It fails as a comedy, it fails again as a tragedy, and thirdly, fails as a play by Sir James Barrie.
The Sister's Tragedy is rather more difficult to judge. It is written to be acted in what we may for brevity call the Repertory- cum-Russian tragic manner. it is well acted, but in the French melodramatic style instead. The result is a muddle, nor were the faults of the production merely intellectual ; there were several small technical flaws—tedious to relate here—which, though perhaps the author was a little to blame, could have been perfectly covered up by competent production. But I must not give the impression that the play was a failure. It was very far from that ; indeed, perhaps to those who are not aware of Mr. Hughes's exceptional talents, the play would seem both profound and satisfying. It is a psychological tragedy of a child who takes a set of pious platitudes, interprets them literally and puts them into practice. Mr. Hughes is, as our readers may remember, a poet whose work has not infrequently appeared in these columns. To be Continued, the next play, is the story of the slop-fiction writer, the serialist, who, to the horror of his sentimental typist, his lady love, his valet and the boy who comes round for copy, does to death the hero of his current serial out of jealousy. It is all very neat, mildly satirical and amusing. Mr. Noel Coward's matrimonial comedy is also entertaining and Miss Auriol Lee acted excellently in it, but I do wish she would not take off her extremely becoming hair ornament so early in the proceedings. The slightly exotic note which it strikes ismecessary to the plot, and greatly increased the pleasure which we derived from looking at her and her beautiful gown.
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