"AT MRS. BEAM'S" AT THE EVERYMAN THEATRE.
IT is good to know that, though the run of Mr. C. K. hfunro's At Mrs. Beam's could not be prolonged at the Everyman Theatre, where it ended last week, this excellent comedy will shortly be seen at a London theatre. That the cast will be the same (with the exception of Mr. Franklin Dyall) is news of hardly less importance, for the acting at the Every- man was of quite unusual excellence, especially that of Miss Jean Cadell as Miss Shoe, which was a finished piece of comedy such as I have not seen for several years.
The plot is essentially a farce plot. It concerns the presence in Mrs. Beam's boarding establishment of a certain Mr. Dermott, his reputed wife, and their enormous trunk. Now another of the boarders (a maiden lady called Miss Shoe, who everlastingly talks, pries into other people's affairs and, putting two and two together, invariably extracts the answer five) has observed that Dermott has not only a large port- manteau, but also a mole under one eye. Obviously, then, be is the woman-murderer—the Landru—of the moment. The play consists of Miss Shoe's behaviour on this assumption, and ends with the discovery that, on the contrary, Dermott and his exotic lady are professional robbers who have departed with all that they could pick up in the boarding-house in their trunk.
A commonplace farce plot, in fact, and in places somewhat crudely treated, but (a large but) the characterization is quite first-rate. These fusty denizens of the boarding-house, and their strange and burglarious birds of passage, are presented with complete reality and individuality not only in what they say but in how they say it ; and though the circum. stances are farcical, their talk and behaviour under those circumstances have a reality deeper than that of larce—the reality, in fact, of genuine comedy. MARTIN ARMSTRONG.
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