"GUY MANNERING"

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 1049, 9 December 1911, Page 5

"GUY MANNERING"

CONVENT PUPILS' PRODUCTION.

"'Guy Mannering,, the play which ] the Convent pupils are preparing to/ stage at the Town Ha Hi, Master ton-, ) next week, as has been ailiready men l - i tioned, is the- dramatised version of j Sir Walter Scott's novel. The hero is a person of small consequence, ! but the characters' assembled around Mm are highly wrought and interesting. In) life we desire to see "right" overcome "migJrt." We mourn wheni oppression- is> triumphant and vice and inhumanity take the lion's share of the good things of this would. Guy Maniiiering leaves us fully satisfied on these points'. The riaseally attorney, Gilbert GlOssim, .who had cheated his' benefactor out of his- estate and turned has only daughter out of doors, pays, the fuJll penalty of his roguery and itti'grati- j tude, and the galilant Colonel -Man- j inerin-g, who, in his youth, had been protected by a generous patron, who in lias declining years had. fallen: into decay and died penn&lesiSi, its made the,'honoured instrument' of eheilltering his unhappy child from the storms, that gather round her. The long liost heir of a noble house .is found and restored to his rights un--der circuimlsitances peculiarly romantic. Tlhere is> a dou'bfte- maairiage brought about in- a natural and I pleasing manner, and there are touches of pathos l and; scenic desorip-1 t'ion of high, genius and power. The two great characters of Guy Mann *ring are Domini Sampson and Meg MJecni'liLes, the scholar and the Gtipsy. A mam, the veriest simpleton iro the ways of the world, yet for whose brain no'learning is too vast. The vagrant hag, clothed in tatters, yet spiritualised by an a-lil but sueprnatuirall ptower, that gives an air of prophesy to the wayward fancies 'and fauvests her hideous form wdtdi the mysterious grandeur of the Sybil. Tlie scene between Lucy Bertram and Domini, when he refuses to be separated from the child of has own master,-,is very pathetic. It would t<ake too long to go through the whole piece and give a romau'k in passing to each part. There are some very popular songs introduced, among them "Slumber My Darling" aind Bishop's, glorious gypsy glee, "The Chough and Urow." Mr Daniel Terry dnwnatised the piece, under tlie superintendence of Scir Walter Scott himself.