"PLUS FOURS" AT THE HAYMARKET.'
THE plot of this play consists of the laborious manufacture of situations at once trivial and improbable. Its dialogue strains human speech beyond its breaking point in order to drag in third-rate epigrams. However, all this is true of 70 per cent. of current plays, and it would be quite unfair to single out this particular one as exceptionally bogus. In fact, as a set-off it is well acted, though that makes its inadequacy the more patent. Miss Peggy O'Neil, Mr. Aubrey Smith, Miss Athene Seyler, were all good ; while, as usual, that most charming of comedians, Mr. John Deveral, had only to walk across the stage to introduce the authentic spirit of comedy to that alien atmosphere. As a matter of fact, admirable as are Mr. Deveral's gestures, irresistible as is his tittering laugh, comprehensive as is his grasp of the psychology of that I trust non-existent creature the " average young Englishman," it is yet perhaps in the movements of his feet that he comes nearest to the ideal of pure formless art, self-complete and self-revealing. And in this is he not
with Chaplin and with Grock ? E. J. S.
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