THE THEATRE
tusii plays are irresistible to many English people. The very and of an Irish voice has the soothing and clouding effect on
y judgement that whisky or a very good dinner has on most
eople's. All the same, I felt a good deal of critical resistance to
e first two acts of Paul Vincent Carroll's play. Much of the alogue was really too conventionally Irish—Irish of the stage and iterature without the real individual tang. Also, the characterisation seemed a bit simple. Obviously, the rough, unlettered, strictly moral farmer was doomed from the first to fall helplessly in love with his rapscallion brother's charming, feminine and tender mistress who had sought refuge in his mother's house. But when in the third act a more stringent reality started creeping in, and the bare outlines of the characters of the men began to be coloured up with the warm tints of flesh and blood, the play began to live and excite a deeper interest. The author has a theme. and it is well worked out. Not only is there eventually a real conflict of characters in the play, but it also gives a vivid picture of contemporary Irish life. The acting was adequate rather than excellent ; but Michael Golden was more than that as the fanatically tempered farmer, and Billy Shine did impart a nice degree of careless verve to the most fantastic of the author's characters which made his extravagance pleasing. Miss Waring was not always audible. JAMES REDFERN.
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