THE THEATRE.
THE WRONG NUMBER " AT THE DUKE OF YORK'S THEATRE.
Ws—it is not fair to go to a farce alone—went to The Wrong Number full of high hopes. Here, we had read in our daily papers, was a really good farce dealing with a really fresh and amusing situation, a farce which found it possible to be funny without a bedroom scene and almost without pyjamas. Alas ! It is true that the actual plot is an amusing one. A man with a grown-up daughter has married a French actress (played by Miss Yvonne Arnaud) and takes her to live in the country.
" A park is purchased and the fair he sees All bathed in tears. Oh odious, odious trees ! "
The actress tries to make the difficulty of getting servants a lever for moving the family back to London. Her husband prides himself upon his capacity for organization, and says that he will get servants. He rings up a registry office in London, but is put on by mistake to a detective agency. He decides that the chance is Heaven-sent; he will engage a male and female detective as butler and cook, and conceal from them as long as possible that there is no mystery to find out. They of course create one out of nothing. Besides this main theme, there are the young lovers—the business man's daughter, whom Miss Joan Barry made a most exasperating little fluttering ingenue, and a young man of undefined noble birth, who is masquerading as a chauffeur and wishes " to be loved for himself alone." The persons of the sub-plot are Mrs. Pansy Capron, the odious actress friend of the French wife, and her husband Billy Capron. They are estranged, and their recon- ciliation has to be brought about; and lastly, a young actor who is supposed in turn to be the lover of both married women.
The authors made nothing of this material. Nearly all the jokes are old; all the situations that result from the new part of the plot are perfectly familiar. We are for the most part spared " knock about," and that is about all that can be said in the play's favour.
We wish that Miss Harriet Ford and Mr. Harvey O'Higgins, the joint authors, would go to Paris and see how the thing is done there. Imitations or translations of French farces are the last thing we want here, but why can't we import the " slap stick " quality which they display in this particular type of drama 7 Not only do the situations in this farce move slowly, but the dialogue moves slowly, four words being almost invariably employed to do the work of two, and this not because the extra two are detached for special duty as epigrams. Again, a farce should be satirical : here all the opportunities for satire were missed. Not long ago in Paris I went to see that most unedifying but extraordinarily entertaining comedy Le Roi. This is now played as a farce, but that does not prevent it from getting in some very entertaining satire on such improbable subjects as plutocratic socialists, ceremonial public speaking, and the sights of Paris. We mix our farce far too thin. Though all the improprieties, which are, of course, the chief feature of the play, were left out of Le Rol, it would still be much more full of substance than the kind of entertainment we get in this country. In England now there seems no place but revue where one may see farce with an ounce of brains
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