ENTERTAINMENTS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 296, 9 May 1911, Page 5

ENTERTAINMENTS.

" V7A WIRELESS." "Via Wireless," played to a crowded house last night at the Theatre Royal, has all the necessary concomitants of average melodrama with an essential addition. The wireless telegraphic apparatus, which has revolutionised communication, is used as the pivot on which the story is hung, and on this apparatus the greatest interest centres. The necessary people for the development of a moving story are a steel king, his daughter, his manager, one of his workmen, a Scotland Yard detective, ana a naval olficer. The manager is the villain of the story. The workman has invented a new gun. So has the naval officer. The manager has registered the invention of the workman in the name of a foreigner, has lied to the workman about the royalty derivable from it—if the Government takes it—and has prevailed over the workman because, like most inventors, he "didn't understand the business." The "works" lias t l, order for the forging of the naval man's gun and it is to the interest of the manager's pocket that it shall be a failure. So he carefully makes the workman in charge of the forging drunk, and the eun is sog reat a failure that at its trial'it blows to bits, and incidentally blows some human beings to bits also. The manager loves his employer's talented daughter (she is a mechanical genius). So does the naval man. When the naval man hears that his gun has blown up he is nt Madeira. So is the manager, and other persons, important to the story, thev having gone there in the steel king's yacht. The Scotland Yard man tolls the naval man the story of the gun accident and warns him to appear at an enquiry. He travels on the yacht at the invitation of the heroine. The yacht is wrecked, but keeps up wireless communication with an ocean liner. Then of course the machinations of the villain are made of no effect, for the liner's boats pick up the principals and they are subsequently gathered at the steel works, where the finest episode takes place under the cross-questioning of the detective. The workman-inventor, "who knew nothing of business," lavs his soul bare, the obvious happy result being that he learns the truth about that little matter of royalty. The manager gets his de?erts and the naval man the girl. The company is one of even excellence, and the work of Mr. Vivian Edwards as the villainous manager is particularly fine. Mr. Charles Blackall gives a new view of a Scotland Yard man—is intelligent, quiet, and without ultramelodramatic methods. Mr. Lionel Atwill is an efficient naval officer, breezy, flf good manners, and true to type. Mr. Ambrose Manning gives a particularly fine character sketch of the inventor who "didn't understand business." Miss Evelyn Kerry, as the heroine, impressed with her sweetness, and the necessary relief was in the good hands of Miss (leorgie O'Meara (as a brisk and unconventional typist), Mr. Robert Bottomley (a clerk), and Master Burns (an office bov with a sharp tongue and quick feet). The fascination of the play ccnires in the actual working of a real wireless machine, the apparatus in use, however, not Wins the firm's own elaborate one, the conditions at the theatre being unfavorable for its use. The scene in the furnace room was vivid enough, and if the fight that there ensued between the navy man and the master mechanic was tame, the steam hammer and the white-hot gun were realistic. Fate doomed the naval man and his fiancee to a footing on a reef when the wreck happened, and the rolling sea, the approaching liner and the lifeboat were shown with wonderfully fine effect. The very large cast was in exceptionally good hands, and the stagecraft generally was of the highest excellence.