AMUSEMENTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 130, 10 September 1910, Page 6

AMUSEMENTS.

BRASS BOTTLE." After long and markedly successful runs in London and Xew York and more recently in Sylney, '"The Brass Bottle," F. Anstey's famous farce-comedy, will be staged for one night only in Xew Plymouth, at the Theatre Royal, on Monday next. The setting of the piece is in every way admirable, and the illusions necessary to the appearances and disappearances of the Fakrash-cI-Aama'sh. the "Jineo of the Green .linn/' the clever and puzzling to a degree. There is a delightful ballet interpolated in the second act, and at times there is traceable a distinct "flavor"' of some pantomime, such as "The Forty Thieves," or musical comedy, like "Morocco Bound." Briefly, the story of the play runs: Horace Ventimore, a young architect, in love with Sylvia Futvoye (daughter of the famous Orientalist and scholar, Professor Futvoye), goes to an auction on behalf'of his prospective father-in-law. and there purchases the fatal "Brass Bottle," which contains the Jinn, who 3000 or 4000 years before, has been enclosed in it by order of King iSuletman the Great (the Hebrew Solomon), together "-*th thousands of his brethren of the Blue and Green Jinn, j and they had all been cast into various waste places of the earth. Fa rash, forinstance, had 'been found at the bottom of the Sea of El Karkar. It his fate to be sold, bottle and all, for £1 in a London auction room. When Ventimore releases him the Jinnee is full of gratitude, and he sets about it to see that his unintentional benefactor shall be full of benefits. In two senses Horace is very "full." A caravan of camels calls at his "rooms" at Ennismore Gardens, and there deposits about a billion pounds worth of diamonds, rubies and emeralds as large as emus' eggs, which are, of course, entirely valueless, being so valuable that nobody could afford to buy them. A client—the first he has ever had—in the person of Mr. Samuel Wackerbath, a very wealthy estate flies in at Ventimore's window, ami promptly gives him a "contract" wort! about £IOO/)00. Horace intends tc j build his new client a -really fine man

sion, and in his enthusiasm tells the'.Tinn of his purpose; the Jinn, onlv too reachto help, runs up a sort of Caliph's palace in one night! But, alas! though, most imposing and ornate, there are no' modern "conveniences." and not a yard of drains to the place. A little dinner at his rooms, which the embarrassed voung architect intends to srive to his fiancee and her family, is metamorphosed into a typical feast from the "Arabian Night." upon which, by-the-bye, the play is founded. And so on until the Jinnee's generosity—being always declined—turns to malevolence, and his wonders become more than embarrassing. Only by playing on his fears of "Progress and Civilisation," two monarchs that are represented by Ventimore to be greater than Solomon ■himself, rloes the vounsr man save his life and finally induce the Jinn to re-enter the Bra=s Bottle. The play is original and clever, and quite out of the common. The play will bo presented bv a company, with two exceptions, entirely new to this town. The box plan is now open at Collier's.