AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOME.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9392, 11 March 1909, Page 2

AN ENGLISHMAN’S HOME.

i)HE PLAY THAT ROUSED ENGLAND.

Following is. »• report from the London Times of January 27th. of tne first performance of the abovenamed .play which subsequently caused such a furore and'materially assisted in tub recruiting for the Territorial Army. .' Mr Williamson has acquired the Australasian rights so it may be seen ini the Dominion soon:-~ As the theatre is notoriously of all our institutions the very last to find itself “in the movement,” the production of such a t play as “An Englishman’s Home,” furnishes startling testimony to the hold which the great National Defence question has taken of the thoughts and imaginations of the English public. The thing is crude enough, and indeed / somewhat amateurishly done; whafc is significant is that the thing should have been done at all. For here is a play all about our national short-comings, our lack or military defence, and still more, our habit 'of pooh poohing any endeavours towards reform. hoc ignorance of our Volunteer troops and * the incompetence of thair officers, all the helplessness that comes from lack of training and direction —these things are held up to the scorn "of the pit. Most remarkable feature of all, this play _is absolutely made up of * ‘ public questions”; attempt at a story in the ordinary sense, at any plot, at any love-interest, there is virtually none. There is Mr Brown, the typical English ratepayer, whose “huuse is his castle.” and who is boiling over with indignation because both the contending armies have had the effrontery to turn this “castle” of his into a “strategic position,” and that too t without asking his leave. Amid * all the pillage andiburnings he goes to look for a policeman. There is young Mr Smith, the typical suburban “bounder,” who spends his life at football matches, knows [the names of, 4 all the players by heart, add looks upon Volunteering as silly rot,” and there is Mr Robinson, the quiet, earnest Volunteer, who finds it impossible to convince the others that abla-bodied Englishmen have Something else to do just now than play at games (even the portly Mr Brown plays diabolo), and who is rallied by all the girls of the household because his uniform is not “becoming.” And are all wrangling and chaffing and reading sporting papers and generally, in *helr own phrase, “rotting” when—enter two stern gentlemen in foreign uniforms. The Englishman’s (Essex) house is occupied by an advance party,of invaders —the army of the “Empress of the North!” From this moment tne grotesque, rather squalid, farce of the thing, is turned to' grim norror. Of course, the main lines of this sort of thing have been familiar enough ever since “The Battle of Dorking”; smug English domesbicity’is suddenly to be brought face to face with the horrors of war. There is the whistling of bullets and the scream of shells; slangy Mr Smith, in the very act of perpetrating more Ooobney jokes, falls dead with a bullet through the heart.. that is only an incident in the author’s general scheme of contrasting the inefficiency of the English Volunteer with the iron discipline and masterly organisation of the invaders. Onr men don’t know how to take the range or how to shoot without exposing themselves, don’t know on what flank the enemy is, don’t know anything. By-and-by the order comes for them to retire, but Mr Brown, indignant with Englishmen for ever retreating before a foreign foe, declares that he, at any rate, will stay. The shells are knocking his “castle’ 1 ’ to pieces, and a kind of frenzy possesses him. He snatches up a rifle, and does £not know how t° nse it; then finds out the way, and shoots one of the enemy. Quickly-overpowered, he is summarily ordered to be shot, as a civilian found in arms. (This particular incident is quite well done, by the way, so well done as to suggest a ciassio 1 little story of Maupassant on the same theme.) As his daughter is wailing over his corpse there is a distant sonod of bagpipes. It appears that the British Army has been rapidly brought np in trains, m^tor-buses, anything; and the invaders are caught in ' a trap. With this final solace to onr national amonr propre—after all, a theatrical audience is human —this remarkable little play comes to an end. It was enthusiastically reoa ived at Wyndham’s Theatre on Wednesday.