"THE LILIES OF THE FIELD" AT THE AMBASSADORS.
IT would be hard to imagine a more charming, fresh and agreeable comedy than Mr. Hastings Turner's Lilies of the Field. There is not a headache in a hogshead. It is really an admirable example of a " pure " art form—that is to say, we are all the time entirely concerned with the fun, the amusing situations, the charming characters (the " art," that is), and are never for one moment asked to look outside them, or to take a glance at the too-often depressing spectacle of real life (the subject, that is). Not that the play is unreal, far from it, but every incident in it, every character, is well selected and admirably displayed, and thus we see only its pleasant and amusing aspect.
Mr. J. H. Roberts, as the clergyman father of two attractive twin daughters (delightfully played by Miss Meggie Albanesi and Miss Edna Best), gave an endearing and technically brilliant performance. His is the best realized character in the piece ; though so lightly drawn, he is an entirely intelligible and real human being, and he has, moreover, some of the best lines in a piece which abounds in wit. There are plenty of small inconsistencies in the play. A whole party arrives from a country vicarage in London for no particular reason, for example ; and the hero—or, rather, the man who marries the heroine—has an odious trick of righteous superiority that his author leaves in the end uncastigated.
I must not give the story away, for though the play depends mostly on dialogue and character, still the turns in the brisk plot are very amusing. Suffice it to say that some truly charming mid-Victorian costumes are involved, and at least one excellent portrait of a well-known London figure.
TARN.
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