CORONET THEATRE
“Home Truths” the one-act play by Miss Effie Adelaide
Rowlands, which last night preceded Sister Anne at the Coronet, is
quite a good little piece of its kind-the kind that, like the mother
of the heroine, is not inaptly described as –“a lump of sweetness."
Mrs. Eldridge, the rheumatic and refined mother in question, making
a brave struggle against poverty and an impossible son and daughter;
her elder daughter, Mary, who has been adopted by a rich godmother
and has never lived at home; and Anthony Dare, the rich young
American at whose head Mary has been thrown by her worldly
godmother, are all three the very incarnation of sweetness. But the
vulgarity of Herbert and Emmie, the stay-at-home son and daughter,
and of George Trust, Emmie's horsey-looking lover, save the
situation and prevent the play from seeming sweet to the point of
insipidity. The brother and sister are ugly- voiced, bad-tempered,
and selfish, and between them are giving their poor mother a very
bad time when the other daughter, Mary, comes home-because, though
she loves the American, she will not be a party to her godmother's
matrimonial designs-and declares her intention of sharing their
poverty and looking after them all. Of course she is followed by the
rich American, and of course she refuses to accept his love and
saddle him with her disagreeable relations; and at last he is just
going to give her up when the brother and sister so plainly and
brutally show that they do not want her that they practically throw
her into his arms. The play was brightly acted by Miss Winifred
Beech, Miss Marion Ashworth, Mr. Arthur Cleave, Mr. Frederic Sargent,
Mr. William Rokeby, and Miss Viva Birkett, the last of whom looked
and spoke charmingly as the sympathetic daughter. Honte Trtishis
makes a capital introduction to Madame Albanesi's play, which, with
Miss Marion Terry's acting, continues to draw good houses to the
Coronet.
The Times - 29th September 1910 |