MR FREDRICK MARSHALL AS QUILP.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3185, 13 September 1881, Page 2

MR FREDRICK MARSHALL AS QUILP.

During; Mr P. Marshall's short season in Napier it is bis intention to produce, among other popular plays, a dramatised version of Dickens' Old Curiosity Sbo'rj under the title of " Qiiip." Referring to Mr Alan-hairs acting in tbe title role y of this piece, the dramatic critic of the Aiistiala-ian fays:—" It is unquestionably a marvellously powerful piece of I acting. That it la norrible need hardly J be said. Everybody knows that Quilp is one of the most repulsive ot' the many Dickens creation?. It is so repulsive that some critics have insisted upon iti improbability. Biit those who judge from what they observe rather than from what they imagine, know that Quilp is not an exaggeration eiiber as he ia found in Dickens' story or as now seen on the Bijou stage. It is easy to say that no human being is unpossessed of some virtue, and that to reptes-eot a man as wholly bad is to depict an unreality. But uven admitting that all good qualities oannot be obliterattd, they are sometimes so atrophied by disease that they are vir'ti.'.y imperceptible. The feeling excited in the mind by seeiug Mr Marshall's Quilp, therefore, is one of admiration bat admiration of a special kind. It is admiration, ustug the word in its original etymological sense, in which a conr-cioustiess of horror blends without any dense of incompatibility. Perhaps the qualities of activity, liveliness, litbenet-s, and suppleness help to relieve, although they cannot po»sibly rewiove the horror. It would be per-hap-s inaccurate to call him a merry devil, and yet be is merry after a fashion. , It is a spiteful merriment; the bnmour ia " mordant, and yet it is humour; fiendish humour, of tbe kind that will scratch, and bite, and revel in the misery of others, but yet humour, not dull, lumpy humour like that of Bill Sykes, but humour with a certain flash. The flash is phosphorescent, forky, blue, ieeking with fumes from cavernous hell, but it flashes nevertheless. It never smouldeis; it is always an active flame, scorching, blinding, burning pifeoutly into the brain, but never flickering. In seeing Mr Marshall's Q-iilp, it is impossible for the spectator to be apathetic. It stirs, fascinates, appals, terrifies, but yet it interests. As an example of physical cacomorphosis it is curiously interesting, and sets one pondering whether, after all, such men as Quilp are not maniacs, so complete is the perversion of moral „ sense in them. In the record of wonderful, but nevertheless natural, representations, Mr F. Marshall's Quilp will always stand out with conspicuous distinctness."