THEATRE ROYAL.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1598, 3 April 1879, Page 3

THEATRE ROYAL.

“ A New Wat to Pat Old Debts.” The announcement of the first representation ■of Massinger’s celebrated play in Christchurch failed to draw more than a moderate house. This, perhaps, is partly to be accounted for by the fact that, except by students of the Elizabethan drama, the play is comparatively unknown, and partly that it is not usually included in the modern acting drama. The play itself has claims on the ground of its intrinsic literary excellence, the language frequently approaching to the sublimity of Shakspere, and combining noble and just conceptions, great descriptive power and poetic imagery at once melodious, varied, and grand. For purity of thought and language, in an impure age, Massinger was a shining contrast to contemporary poets and dramatists. As a skilful constructor of plot, intricate yet lucid, a power of enchaining the interest without confa-iug the spectator, the author of “ A New Way to Pay Old Debts” had few rivals, even in an age made illustrious by Shakspeare, Beaumont, and Fletcher, Bon Jonson and John Webster. He approached nearer to the bard of Avon in the divine purity of his ideas, and the exquisite poetry with which he clothed them, than any other of his contemporaries, and his plays are undefiled by the obscenities or profanities that blemish such otherwise unapproachable dramas as the “ Duchess of Malfi,” “Vittoria Carombona,” or “A Woman Killed with Kindness.” Of the plot of the play, and the dramatis personal it will be sufficient to say that the former is based on the notorious extortions of two famous usurers who flourished in the time of James the First—Sir Giles Mompeson and Sir Francis Mitchell. Those two worthies are the most prominent of the characters, and were the prototypes of the Overreach and the Marrall. The originals met with their deserts through the Star Chamber, whose arbitrary power they had frequently invoked to carry oat their nefarious designs. In the play Sir Giles falls a victim to his own conflicting emotions, while his servile, cringing, and treacherous tool is left to be dealt with by poetical justice. Sin-e the days of Edmund Kean, the late G. Y. Brooke was the only .perfect representative of Sir Giles Overreach, ■and a great deal of his success was due to his magnificent physique, which enabled him to give adequate effect to his conception. Mr Gres wick is perhaps the last representative of this difficult character on the English stage, and his performance last night was distinguished by great ability. With great judgment, he reserved his powers unto the final act of the play, at the same time presenting a faithfully repulsive portrait of the remorseless vampire who gloried that his heart was steeled against all the prompting of remorse. There was a cold blooded fiendish villany; a callous nonchalance to the misery that ho caused which was at once repellent and fascinating, and showed that the actor was equally skilful in pourtraying the tortuous windings of a had man’s mind, as he was successful in depicting the whole devotion and self-sacrifice of a Virginias or the lurid grandeur flashing out in the mental wreck of Lear. In the last scene the baffled rage, impotent hatred, and unavailing wrath of the usurer were depicted with perfect skill and unabated energy, the working of Mr Creswick’s countenance being a reflex of the stormy passions which were supposed to agitate his mind. Generally speaking, the rest of the characters were bat indifferently sustained, the best of them being the Wellborn of Mr H. H. Vincent, and the Marrall of Mr. Stirling Whyte, There was rather too much of the Captain Bobadil in the former gentleman’s conception of the reclaimed spendthrift, and Mr Whjte, though never “ o’erstopping the modesty of nature,” would have been more effective if he had been a little more silky in his servility, and quietly intense in the hour of his triumph. Mr Harry Power had not the slightest conception of the requirements for the successful representation of Justice Greedy, fidgetty, fussy, and apparently oppressed by a recollection of Pluellyn, Mr Power was anything but happy in the conception of the gluttonous rogue whose whole ignoble soul is absorbed in gastronomy. The quartette of “ artistes ” who impersonated Amble, Order, Furnace, and Watchall, were equally at sea in the interpretation of the Elizabethan drama, and their costumes were more distinguished by variety than appropriateness. These characters, when well acted, are an immense help to the piece; as caricatured last night they were a dismal failure. Messrs Burford and Elliott gave a level rendering of Lord Lovel and Allworth, and Miss Helen Ashton and Miss Navaro both looked extremely fascinating in their respective characters of Margaret and Lady Allworth, and quite equal to the dramatic requirements demanded of them. The same play will be repeated toght.