Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/184

The title was not, of course, meant to deceive, for Mr. Vachell is an honest man; and anyhow the critics, for that is their business, would be swift to disillusionize the public; but in our permissible state of suspicion, the audience might easily be led to suppose from the word "Searchlights," combined with the early appearance of an imported Teuton in the person of Sir Adalbert Schmaltz, that spy-work was in the air. But the genial domesticity of this naturalized Scot quickly disposed of our unworthy apprehensions, and we soon learned that his provenance bad no bearing upon the issue.

That issue was concerned with a question of paternity, whose acuteness happened to be contemporaneous with that of the present European crisis. I say "happened"; for here again I cast no reflection upon Mr. Vachell's intent, or suggest that the war-element in his play was introduced as an afterthought into his original scheme. If it was, which I doubt, then the patchwork was cleverly concealed; and my only complaint must be of a certain obscurity in the relation between the two patterns in his design. For if the title implied that the effect of the War was to throw a searchlight into the dark places of the human heart (as distinguished from its influence upon our City streets), I do not think that in the case of Robert Blaine's heart, if he had one, the author has made this operation sufficiently clear.

Mrs. Blaine had a grown-up_son, born after five years of barren wedlock, who was the object of her husband's profound detestation. After some twenty years—a little late, perhaps, in the day, but the author wished us to be present when he did it—Robert Blaine, at a moment when his wife is trying to get her boy out of a tight corner, declares an inveterate doubt of his fatherhood, and she makes confession of her fault. Subsequently—in a "strong" scenes—he recants, alleging that her confession was a work of creative art, produced in a spasm of spite; and everybody except the immovable Blaine is vastly relieved.

But not for long, for she presently recants her recantation. You will guess that, though a little shaken, we were not in despair, but looked hopefully for a re-recantation. But you are in error. Her second confession, though no words passed her lips, was obviously final. And what induced it? What was the piece of conviction? If you will believe me, it was just a photograph with which her husband confronted her—an old photograph of her lover that she mistook for her son's, so close was the likeness. This was surely a flaw in Mr. Vachell's scheme, for it is unbelievable that she should have hitherto overlooked this fatal resemblance, even if her attention had not as a fact been called to it by a garrulous friend at quite an early stage in the proceedings of the play.

Another weakness, common enough where an author wants to show a variety of types and excuses himself from the trouble of assorting them, was to be seen in the extreme improbability of the friendship between Blaine and Sir Adalbert Schmaltz. These two were always staying in one another's houses yet there never could have been the smallest of tastes in common between the dour and moody financier and the light-hearted consumer of lager beer and delikatessen.

But I prefer, if you please, to dwell upon the shining virtues of Mr. Vachell's Searchlights. With the exception of an interlude or two of needless triviality—Lady Schmaltz's sobbing scene, for instance—the essentials of the tragic theme held us grimly in their grasp. But always we could's find relief in the author's humanity, revealed not only in the passionate devotion of the mother's heart, but in the persuasive character of her boy, and the unaffected quality of his relations both to her and to the girl who wanted his love.

Mr. Vachell would be the first to acknowledge, and generously, how much he owes to the really remarkable performance, as Mrs. Blaine, of Miss Fay Davis, who can never before have accomplished so high an achievement. But the matter was there for her clever hands to shape, and that was the author's doing.

Mr. Harry Irving's, too, was a fine performance, though, from the moment of his entrance, a figure of sinister portent, he lacked all contrast of light and shade. But, to be just, that was hardly in the part, as made—deliberately, so it seemed—for those particular methods of which he is the master.

As for Mr. Holman Clark, if all Teutons, naturalized or other, were like his Sir Adalbert Schmaltz (or Sir Keith Howard, as he called himself after the War began, on the principle that the best was good enough for him) I should have small ground of quarrel with the race. But how this joyous German ever came to wear a kilt and own a deer-forest I cannot hope to understand, for there was no hint of Semitic origin in his face or composition.

Mr. Reginald Owen made a most human soldier-boy, and I shall never want to meet a Guardsman with a better manner or an easier sense of humour. I remark, by the way, that young Blaine is the second stage-hero (the first was in The Cost) whom the War has affected in the head.

Miss Margery Maude, though she had the rather ungrateful part of a girl who is quite ready, thank you, to be loved as soon as you feel like it, played, as always, with a very perfect tact and charm.

Finally, Miss Kate Bishop was her dear old self, and Mr. Tom Reynolds' sketch of a solicitor was as bright as it was brief.

I venture to offer my best compliments both to the cast and to the author, and to hope that his Searchlights may serve well to pierce the shadows of the night through which we are passing.