HAWTREY COMEDY COMPANY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XII, Issue 1060, 30 November 1903, Page 2

HAWTREY COMEDY COMPANY.

THE OPENING PRODUCTION.

The Hawtrey Company open thei? season on Wednesday next with theit latest trump oard " The Two Mr Wetherby’e.” Commenting on the London performance, tbe Referee of March, 3rd, 1903, says : " Tbe two Mr Wethorby’s was good business all along the line—perhaps I should say the lines, for they were all worth listening to, being pointed and witty and epigrammatic, and charged now with humor that provoked a laugh, and now with feeling that compelled a tear. The scene was the bouse of James Wotherby. James was of so meek and mild a disposition that he was easily imposed on. His wife’s aunt appeared to have taken up with him her everlasting abode on earth. That auut’s smug and sanctimonious nephew, Robert, came almost every day to get his luncheon or his dinner or his tea, and to bog for subscriptions for missionary societies, with all mannerof ridiculous schemes in hand, and his brother Richard's wife Constantia, who was separated from her husband, had become the ocoupant of a house that wbb almost next door. Poor James was the victim of his relations. They made him somewhat uncomfortable; but thero was further trouble for him in tho consciousness that he was a humbug and a hypocrite passing as a Baint, when all the time he was a miserable sinner. Brother Dick’s wife had left |him because he would not submit to petticoat government and give a satisfactory explanation of his doings when he happened to bo out late at night. James, when he stayed out late, always vowed that he had been to a missionary meeting. “Oh, that Richard had been like James I’’was1 ’’was the general cry. And one'.fine day Richard went down to James’s house at Norsewood to have the one interview a year which had been arranged for with his wife—the wife who was beginning to think she had acted foolishly, and who, asserting that her husband must no longer be allowed to exercise the malign influences of bachelor freedom, was hoping that he would express contrition and take her hack. But Dick Wetherby was not built that way. He rallied James on his submissivenoss, and, giving it that they were going to the local club to play billiards, he carried him up to town, and took him to the Empire. ,On their return James, changing his coat, overlooked the Empire programme. His wife discovered it, and her hushand’s high, moral principles came down with a crash.

Mrs James Wetherby determined to do what Mrs Ricbaid Wetherby had done She would have done it, too, had not Mr Richard Wetherby convinced her of the folly of the course she proposed to pursue. And while he was working a cure for his brother’s trouble, he was persuaded that he might do worse than take a dose of his own physic. Husbands and wives were reconciled, and there was good reason to believe that the much too good relations would shortly be shown the nearest way to the street door.

The World’s great laughing success" The Other Man’s Business,” will be the attraction for the second night; “ Little Lord Fauntleroy ” for the Friday; and a “ Message from Mars ” on Saturday.