THE THEATRE.
" JOHN FERGUSON " AT THE LYRIC, IIAM.MERSMITH- GRANGE the name of John Ferguson to What's in a Threat P or The Brother's Revenge, call the Fergusons the Meadowsweets (giving us for Hannah Ferguson, Rose Meadowsweet), act the play at the Elephant and Castle or the Lyceum, cast it with the actors and actresses indigenous to those theatres, put in an occasional " Time will come ! " and you have certainly a very good but not a very unusual sort of melodrama. The auditor will probably leave the Lyric feeling that it is good acting alone which lends distinction to a play that is else simply a competent example of the " strong " drama.
Briefly, Mr. St. John Ervine's plot is this. John Ferguson's farm is mortgaged, the mortgagee, of course, being the villain. The farmer applies in vain to a rich brother in America. The villain announces his intention of foreclosing. James Caesar, a not unpleasant but chicken-hearted grocer, offers to pay off the mortgage if Hannah, the farmer's daughter, will marry him. Hannah tries to fight her repugnance and say " Yes," but after an evening's courting her courage fails, and she goes up at night to the villain's house to tell him that he must foreclose after all. The villain takes advantage of a dark night and a lonely walk home to do her an irremediable harm. Caesar vows vengeance, which he is too cowardly to execute, but lies up all night in a whin-bush without shooting. Hannah's brother Andrew, spurred on by "Clutie" Magrath, the village idiot, does, however, shoot the villain. Suspicion falls on Caesar, who owing to his lying out all night is unable to prove an alibi. He is im- prisoned and going to be executed when Andrew Ferguson at last owns up. The curtain falls on the arrival, too late, of the money from America, and on Andrew's departure for the police barracks to give himself up.
The old farmer, carefully acted by Mr. Rea, and "Chit*" quite perfectly portrayed by that incomparable artist Mr. Miles Malleson, are the only two characters in which originality is attempted. John Ferguson with his forgiving spirit and la- Bible, and " Clutie " with his inconsequence and his penny whistle, constitute an effective chorus.
Do not mistake me ; I do not mean that if you go to the Lyric you will feel thatyou have been by mistake to the Elephant and Castle ! The acting plus these two characters is sufficient. The illusion of a play of some subtlety is produced. It is only going home on the Underground that you will begin to have doubts, and to wonder whether the introduction of so dreadful a crime as that committed by the villain is not a fault of taste in a play that cannot be taken quite seriously.
All the acting is good, and Miss Moyna MacGill as Hannah was admirable in her hardness and her despair. Mr. Raymond Valentine as the villain was convincingly coarse and cruel, while Mr. Rea's acting is always interesting. As for Mr. Miles Malleson, the docile agility of his body and the sympathy, yet inconsequence, of his mind were beyond praise. Those who saw him recently as Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice will be astonished at his versatility.
And after all, why should not we go to see melodrama very well acted ? Why should the transpontines have the monopoly
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