THE HOLLOWAY DRAMATIC COMPANY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4328, 27 January 1893, Page 2

THE HOLLOWAY DRAMATIC COMPANY.

" A Ring of Iron."

After concluding a most successful season ofiour weeks in Wellington, during which time packed houses and enthusiastic audiences have been the order of the day, the Holloway Dramatic Compauy favor Masterton with a visit before leaving for Christohurch. The first piece staged will be a five act drama entitled " A Ring of Iron," which is by Mr Frank Harvey, and which has always obtained an exceedingly favourable reception. The dramatist wouid appear to have written this play with a view of exposing the pregnant abuse which used to obtain in England when wealthy and un scrupulous persons could rid themselves of tlioae wbo were likely to prove obstacles to the accomplishment of their ends by having them incarcerated in private asylums, the proprietors of which were generally well paid for the patients of whom they took custody, A Duneain exchange, referring to the production, says:—The subject is a gloomy one, but though there is much of pathos in "A Ring of Iron," the comic side is very prominently preaented—and very skilfully presonted—by the members of the Holloway Company, to whom the duty of depicting it is assigned. It tells the story of a man who deemed it desirable for his own liberty to leave tho shores of. England for those of Australia, where with his wife and child ho lived on the Oven's river diggings, For tho sake of greater security, 100, he dropped his namo of Graham and assumed that of Gordon, but he was known to his companions as Gentleman Jack (MrC. Holloway) -an idle, useless fellow,who spent bis time chiefly in drinking and gambling. Ho was supposed to have married beneath him, and for bis wife, Mary Gordon (Miss Constance Deorwyn), the heroine of the play, he had nothing but reproaches and rude words, In a morose temper he was sitting one evening outside his shanty, glancing over an English paper, when, to his amazement, he read that, through the death of his elder brother, Sir Evan Graham, he had fallen heir to certain estates in England, the possession of which would raiee him to a position of affluence, The ties which bind him to Australia—his wife and child—ho hesitates not to snap, and in his haste to return to England to enjoy the new career that is opened up to him he omits the formality of bidding them farewell. Having established bis claim to bis i title aud property, his next concern i is to find a wife who suited to his station, and he presses his attentions with such success upon an heiress named Geraldino Bollew (Miss Linda Raymond) that she discards another suitor, Dr Meredith ( M r It. Stewart), i to whom sbo had promised her hand, ' and becomes engaged to Graham. The latter, however, has forcibly brought . home to him the truth of the proverb that there is many a slip 'twixt cup and lip, for at the very moment when he is congratulating himself upon having blotted absolutely out from his mind all recollections of Australia and when he is exolairaing that nothing shall oome between him and the realisation of his dreams, the wife, whom he had cruelly abandoned, appears before him. She had followed him to England, and by one of those curious coincidences, of which there are such frequent examples in fiction, had just accepted the position of companion to Miss Bellaw. Her husband attempted to make terms with her if she would leave tho coun* try and him, but rhe declines his proposals, and ho resorts to force, gets her drugged, and then has her removed to Marwood House Asylum, where she is placed in restraint under a oruel nurse. Dr Meredith, however, who wa3 an early admirer of hers, and who baa learned her story from her own lips, traces her to her institution, to which he with difficulty obtains admission, and then by a ruse effects her rescue. Determined to frustrate her husband's designs, sho meets him face to face as he ia about to lead Miss Bollew to the altar, and her assertions that she is his wife and the mother of hie child is amply corroborated by Sam Thorpo (Mr Oily Deering) anil Nnnoy (Mies Alioe Deorivyn), who had also been on the diggings, Dr Meredith, meanwhile hud become possessed of certain other interesting information respecting Graham, the result of whichis that the baronet is arrested for acts of forgery committed prior to bis flight for Australia. The play might well terminate there; but another act is added, in which we leam that Graham dies by bis own hand in gaol, whereupon his widow agrees to make another essay in matrimony—this time with Dr Meredith. The oast of characters is a powerful one, and we have no doubt that everyone who can, will take tho'opportU" nity of being presont at the perform* auce, .