DENNIS EADIE (of all actors) was doing in this galley, this
melted-butter boat. And indeed there were moments when I could see that Mr.
EADIE himself shared my wonder, if I rightly interpreted certain signs of
indifference and detachment in his performance. I even suspected a sinister
intention in the title, though, of course, Messrs. MORTON and NICCODEMI
didn't really get their play off in the course of a bargain sale of
superannuated goods.
Apart from the Second Act, where Miss MARIE LOeHR (looking rather like a
nice Dutch doll) delivered the blunt gaucheries of _Remnant_ with a
delightfully stolid naivete, the design of the play and its simple little
devices might almost have been the work of amateurs. The sordid quarrels
between _Tony_ and his preposterous mistress (whom I took to be a model,
till I found that he was only an artist in steam locomotives) were
extraordinarily lacking in subtlety. In all this Bohemian business one
looked in vain for a touch of the art of MURGER. What would one not have
given for something even distantly reminiscent of the _Juliet_ scene--"_et
le pigeon chantait toujours_"? And it wasn't as if this was supposed to be
a sham Americanised _quartier_ of to-day. We were in the true period--under
Louis PHILIPPE.
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