All this excellently put together, seasoned with wisdom and wit and most capably played; Miss FAY COMPTON, admirable example of a pretty actress who won’t let herself be captured by stage tricks, making everything explicable except her continued love for her intolerable bore (and Turk) of a husband; Mr. A.E.  MATTHEWS handling a desperately unsympathetic part, which was already beginning to look impossible, with great adroitness; and Mr. STANLEY LOGAN, though badly hampered by a shocking cold and fighting a coughing audience, carrying the bulk of the good talk and lifting it gently over the few difficult places with a brilliant and well-concealed art.

Thus till towards the end of the Second Act.  Then a bad, a very bad, fairy stuffed into Mr. MEGRUE’S head the idea of the suicide lottery.  The infuriated husband, finding his wife in her friend’s room at 7 P.M. (frightfully improper hour), sternly offers his bowler (or Derby) hat, in which are two cards.  The one marked with a cross is drawn by the flutterer and means that he is for it.  He is to kill himself within twenty-four hours....  And all this with perfect seriousness.

You will see how the Third Act of a comedy which had tied itself in this kind of a knot simply could not be played.  The author had completely sacrificed plausibility, and it was not uninteresting to see him twisting and turning, hedging and bluffing to save it; and a little uncomfortable to note the conviction oozing away out of the performers....  Queer also that it isn’t more generally recognised that to come to the theatre with a loud persistent cough is a form of premeditated robbery with violence.

T.

* * * * *

A NEW LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

The latest development in connection with the International Brotherhood movement is the establishment of a College of Correct Cosmopolitan Pronunciation.  The need of such an institution has long been clamant, and the visit of the Ukrainian choir has brought matters to a crisis.  At their concert last week several strong women wept like men at their inability to pronounce the title of one of the most beautiful items on the programme—­ “Shtchedryk.”  Again, as Mr. SMILLIE must have bitterly reflected, how can we possibly render justice to the cause of Bolshevism so long as we are unable to pronounce the names of its leaders correctly?  The same remark applies to the Russian Ballet; the Yugo-Slav handbell-ringers; the vegetarian Indian-club swingers from the Karakoram Himalayas; the polyphonic gong-players from North Borneo; the synthetic quarter-tone quartette from San Domingo; the anthropophagous back-chat comedians from the Solomon Islands; not to mention a host of other interesting companies, troupes, corroborees and pow-wows which are now in our midst for the purpose of cementing the confraternity of nations.