BEHIND THE FOOTLIGHTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8465, 15 June 1907, Page 3

BEHIND THE FOOTLIGHTS.

>—- TOWN HALL BOOKINGS. June 15th.—"TheFatal Wedding." June 25th.—Andrew Black Concert. July 3rd.— Taylor-Carrington Company. July 16th.—J. and N. Tait. July 25th and 26th.—J. C. Williamson. July 29th and 30th.—Harry Rickards' Company. August 7th,—Madame Tereso Carreno. September 9th.—Miss Jessie McLachlan. September 24th.—J. C. Williamson. October 16th.~Willoughby-Ward Company. November Bth and 9th.—Allan Hamilton (pencilled.) December 9th.—Edwin Geach (jpencilled.) The'following extract from a London publication in regard , to a new play which has attracted great attention in the Old Land should be read with interest :-- "JOHN GLAYDE'S HONOUR." A new and original play, in four acts. —By Alfred Sutro. John Glayde, an American iron king, has won financial success at forty. He has, however, had little time to devote to anything else—even to his wife, though, after twelve years of marriage, he loves her deeply. Moved by rumour, he arrives one day from America at her flat in Paris. He reminds her that it is nearly seven months since they were together. "Really!" says she; "but then we never see much of each other, do we?" Treated as one who could be satisfied with "diamonds, horses, motor-cars," the offerings of mere wealth, Muriel Glayde has fallen in ,with the ways of the fast, Bohemian, Anglo-American set in Paris and taken a lover, one Trevor Lerode, ■ a good-looking portrait painter. Glayde is determined first to find out how matters stand, and then to put them right by turning over a new leaf and devoting himself less to business, more to his wife. In a series ( of clever scenes the catastrophe is approached, the audience knowing no more than the husband how matters really stand. Then Muriel avows her passion for Lerode, and it is arranged that the guilty pair shall both fly that evening. Thus ends Act ll.' In the third act, Glayde taxes his wife with her guilty secret, and reveals his determination to save her from the consequences of , her ruinous dalliances. Muriel confesses by burying,her face in her hands. An impassioned apneal on his part gives her a brilliant idea. She pretends that the affair with Lerode is of the past. She still loves her husband. But will he stay at home for an hour while she attends an Embassy; reception? And then she even kissad him. The deceived husband agrees. But, his secretary, Shurmur, follows Mrs Glayde, sees her leave the carriage at a shop with two entrances, and hire a cab for Lerode's studio. He brings back the news. Glayde goes to the studio, and finds his wife for a moment alone. He bitterly upbraids her for treachery... She excuses it on the ground that she loves Lerode, and was frightened he would be shot. Glayde appears bent on vengeance; but she has the courage of her love. 1 Muriel (with a shriek): "You mean to kill him." , John (coldly): "Why not?" Muriel (frantic* 1 * " Why not-r-why not? Because I adore him—you hear t' at?^-adore him 1 Belong to him, oddy and soull" , John (with a great cry, writhing, broken in two): "Oh, have you no pity?" When' Lerode comes back, John's , resolve, is soon and briefly Expressed. "Thin woman loves you," he says in a dead, calm tones. "She used to' be my wife. She loves you beyond anything else—honesty truth and shame. She has made the greatest of all sacrifices for you—she has lied and betrayed. Take her away. I snail divorce her—you can get married. I shall make provision for her that she may never waht. Take her and help her—to lie and betray no more!" That is the end of the play. Lerode and Muriel are tempermanentally unsiiited to each other; they are both aware of the fact and they are left in the studio with a motor tear outside waiting to carry them to their destination—two pathetic isolated figures standing far away from each other with misery painted on their faces. In an exceptionally long criticism of the play The Times says:—"No more in this than in any other of his playß can wejfind that Mr Sutro has anything of real moment to say. But ... Mr Sutro has spun us a capital yarn. . . . There is always something 'on' and you have always a keen curiosity as to what everybody will be 'up to' next. In short the play has the supreme quality of, amusing .... As the husband Mr Alexander plays, splendidly. All the husbands in the theatre are sorry for him And Miss Eva Moore as the wife plays splendidly. But in the great lying scena of the third act she makes the mistake of lying too much like truth." Says the Daily Telegraph:—"To those who are more than a little weary of the idle prettiness with which the English stage is so fond of adorning itself the play comes with a shock of pleasurable surprise. It is real stuff dealing with actual life. .... The last act was watched with absolute brenthlessness; we did not know how it was going to end; and when the curtain fell there was that moment,of strained silence followeu by a burst of applause which proved how keenly aroused were the sympathies and interest of the spectators. Never have we seen Mr George Alexander act with a more genuine power and authority. ... Muriel Glayde is an unsympathetic, difficult woman to portray, but Miss Eva Moore executed her arduous task with an admirable and finished skill." On the other hand the Daily Chronicle says:—"lt is strong; but wrong. . . .If only John Glayde had waited half an hour longer, Muriel would most probably have changed her mind, and he might have had a chance of beginning to do his duty. Above all, nothing is more obvious throughout the play than that all she wanted was to be understood. As for her lying, she did it—as she said —to save her lover. Still, however

deplorable its sympathies, there is no doubt about 'John Glayde'a Honour' being a challenging play. . . . It is, in some scenes, quite superbly acted. . . . Not least, one may add that the play is produced with most perfect taste. Each scene is a sublimation of upholstery, and the dresses are from dreamland.' Apart from the principal parts, Mr Michael Sherbrooke's secretary and the journalist of Mr Norman Forbes are especially noteworthy impersonations."