II.—MISALLIANCE.
It was a great relief to find Mr. Shaw as cheerful as usual on Wednesday. Misalliance, his new "Debate in One Sitting," shows no unexpected change of manner or matter. Small parts of it, especially at the beginning, are boring; and it contains the inevitable feeble jokes. The rest of the evening was pleasantly charmed by a continuous dis- play of agility and wit, whether the conversation was about clerks, or the theory of government, or the break-up of the family. The contrast between Misalliance and Justice is clearly more than one between liveliness and severity. Mr. Shaw threw over realism long ago. His characters are no more real than the Turkish bath and the aeroplane which provide the bogus •" action" that he has put into his latest play for the amusement of his critics. Julius Baker may be a bank-clerk, awl Lina Szczepanowska a tight-rope dancer ; but there is no pretence at any deeper differentiation. This naturally creates a great difficulty for the eaters, who are faced with dummies that for a few moments at a time possess very marked characteristics, but relapse almost immediately into long, stereotyped, set speeches. But Mr. Frohman's company is full of resource, and has evolved (doubtless with the assistance of Mr. Shaw, who " produces " his own plays) a new convention of acting, rather formal, and tending a little to caricature,—the very opposite of the acting in Justice, but admirably suited to Misalliance. On the whole, then, the second production was much more entertaining, but much less imposing, than the first. In the first week of AA existence the Repertory Theatre has set itself a very high standard; but there is every reason to hope that it can be maintained.
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