THE THEATRE.

" THE BEGGAR'S OPERA," LYRIC THEATRE, HAMMERSMITH

.T is little wonder that The Beggar's Opera held the stage for a :entury, that it made a fortune for its author and producer, and that the names of Polly Peachum and Maoheath passed into the language. Its revival is more than a literary event, for it is impossible to imagine a wittier or more light-hearted enter- tainment than it proves to be in Mr. Nigel Playfair's production. It is sublimated Gilbert and Sullivan. There is the Gilbertian wit, the Gilbertian- capacity for inversion, while the charming airs to which The Beggar's Opera is set surpass Sullivan for all his humour. The sparkle and vivacity of Mr. Playfair's production exceed anything that I ever saw before in comic opera. It has, by the way, been to some extent bowdlerized, and as it is played it is not shocking.

Hero is a bald outline of the plot. The Beggar himself gives in the Introduction a delightful account of the intention of the flouts and jeers :— " This piece I own eras originally writ for the celebrating the Marriage of James Chanter and Moll Lay, two most excellent Ballad-Singers. I have introduced the Similes that are in all your celebrated Operas ; The Swallow, the Moth, the Bee, the Ship, the Flower, &c. Besides, I have a Prison-Scene, which the Ladies always reckon charmingly pathetick. As to the Parts, I have observed such a nice Impartiality to our two Ladies that it is impossible for either of them to take Offence. I hope I may be forgiven, that I have not made my Opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue ; for I have no Recitative : excepting this, as I have consented to have neither Prologue nor Epilogue, it must be allowed an Opera in all its Forms. '

The opera itself opens with a scene in which are used all the moral and histrionic properties that belong to the Heavy Father and anguished Mother of an erring daughter, but this time the grievance is that, not content with a love affair, she is married. It is the scandalized mother who sings the celebrated song :-

"Mrs. PEACH-UM, in a very great Passion.

Our Polly is a sad Slut ! nor heeds what we have taught her.

I wonder any Man alive will ever rear a Daughter !

For she must have both Hoods and Gowns, and Hoops to swell her Pride, With Scarfs and Stays, and Gloves and Lace ; and she will have Men beside ; And when she's drest with Care and Cost, all tempting, fine and gay, As Men should serve a Coweumber, she flings herself away."

Polly has irrevocably married Macheath. Then the parents try to find excuses. Perhaps, after all, her idea in marrying him was to betray the highwayman's whereabouts to the law and claim the £40 reward when he was hanged ? The affectionate parents are a little consoled. Was this it ? But alas, no !

" POLLY. I did not marry him (as 'tie the Fashion) coolly and deliberately for Honour or Money. But, I love him. Mrs. PEACHUM. Love him ! worse and worse ! I thought the Girl had been better bred. Oh Husband, Husband ! her Folly makes me mad ! my Head Minis ! I'm distracted ! I can't support myself—Oh ! [Fa PEACHUM. See, Wench, to what a Condition youhianvtso. reduc'd your poor Mother ! "

Polly will have no hand in betraying her husband. Something must be done to get her out of her scrape, and her parents therefore resolve to turn him over to the law themselves. Polly overhears the plan, and warns Macheath. The whole intrigue is thus on foot. Meanwhile Macheath is not a little embarrassed by Polly's constancy and devotion. Once back in his own haunts hiding from justice, and separated from his Polly, ho sends the porter of his tavern for " All the Ladies," and they have a brilliant little scene together—"a dance ai la ramie in the French manner" and two or three songs (note especially " Before the barn door crowing "), but at the end of the scene the " ladies " blindfold him, and on a darkened stage and amid terrible rolling of (.rums, hand him over to the constables. Macheath is con- fined in Newgate—an awkward circumstance, as Lucy Lockit is the daughter of the jailer. " Have you no tenderness," he asks her, " to see a husband in these circumstances ? "

LUCY. A Husband !

MACHEATH. In ev'ry Respect but the Form, and that, my Dear, may be said over us at any time.—Friends should not insist upon Ceremonies. From a Man of Honour, his Word is as good as his Bond."

Upon this scene enters Macheath's second wife Polly, and even the great man is put about, and sings the most celebrated of the songs :— " How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear Charmer away ! "

After a terrible scene between Lucy and Polly, Polly goes away, and Macheath prevails upon the jealous daughter to steal the keys and let him out—the whole an exquisite piece of mock melodrama. 'Macheath gone, another encounter ensues between the two wives, in which Lucy tries to poison Polly with the con- tents of a huge bottle marked " Ratsbane." But Macheath's freedom is short. He is recaptured, and the curtain falls upon him in the act of being led from the condemned cell to the place of execution.

But such an end is unthinkable ! The player who had spoken the Prologue remonstrates with the Beggar. By Macheath's being hanged, the play has been turned into " a downright deep tragedy," and an opera " must end happily." The Beggar hesitates, then admits that his objection is just. After all, the blemish is easily removed. " For you must allow, that in this kind of drama, 'tie no matter how absurdly things are brought about. So—you rabble there !—run and cry, A Re- prieve !--let the prisoner be brought back to his wives in triumph ! " The curtain rises again just in time. Macheath has got the noose round his neck. The reprieve is brought, and the executioner, with commendable resource, produces a large maypole from behind the gibbet. By now a dozen or more of Macheath's wives have collected, and the opera ends in a kind of grand ballet finale.

The readw. is to imagine that the plot which I have so baldly set out is lamest as perfectlyclothed with witty dialogue and all the sprightly arts of the theatre as it is possible for him to conceive. The acting at the Lyric is brilliant to an extraordinary degree ; the singing delicious. There is finish both in the acting and in all the details of dancing and stage grouping. If the actors could be frozen at any moment of the performance, the stage would always present to the eyo a per- fect little Hogarth. Mr. Lovat Fraser's costumes and setting are beyond praise. The dresses worn by Captain Macheath's "ladies "—we congratulate Mr. Play-fair on an admirable Beauty Chorus, by the way—are extraordinarily pleasing, and the rogues are tousled and ruffianly without being squalid.

The scene remains practically the same throughout the play, the different places in which it is laid being cleverly suggested by minor alterations. Mr. Lovat Fraser's little non-committal interior was a triumph. But no amount of charm in the decora- tion and clothes could have compensated for unintelligent acting. The caste, however, was all life and fire. Why is opera never acted so, and why is musical comedy never either so acted or so sung ? Miss Sylvia Nellie as a truly peachlike Polly Peachum, Mr. Frederick Ranalow as a rich-voiced Wal- polcian Macheath, Miss Elsie French as the cold-blooded Mrs. Peachum, and Miss Violet Marquesita as the melodramatic dagger-and-bowl Lucy Lockit, were particularly and brilliantly successful. The ensembles were excellent, and the macabre el, meets in the play were recognized but not insisted upon.

Judging by As You Like It and by the present production, . Nigel Playfair's management is as unrivalled in its capacity for producing good acting as is Mr. Lovat Fraser for producing visual beauty by simple and unobtrusive means. In con- clusion, as an amusing, light-hearted, thoroughly funny enter- tainment, there is nothing going on in London at the moment which approaches The Beggar's Opera.

That The Beggar's Opera, when first acted, was a piece "full of Court and party scandal, written in a loose effeminacy of style and appealing to the debauched taste of the better vulgar," I fully admit. But happily corrupt works of art, like crude and heady liquors, lose their bad qualities by age and keeping. A fierce brandy a hundred years old becomes mild and agreeable. Se Gay's opera, though in its day capable of debauching the debauched, will now do no harm and increases the gaiety of the