"THE SON OF HEAVEN"
Ma. LvrroN STRACHEY'S play, The Son of Heaven, acted at the Scala on Monday afternoon, held and delighted a very distinguished audience, an audience, too, which was very critical. The story is of Palace Plots and Intrigues, sustained by all the machinery of Oriental autocracy—an Empress, an Emperor, Princes, Ministers, Courtiers, amorous Generals, Ladies-in-waiting, Eunuchs, Mobs, and Bodyguards, and a masked Executioner. Most wisely Mr. Strachey did not make his characters and his dialogue too Oriental. Following the tradition of Dryden in Aurungzebe and Racine in Bajazet, there was no dehumanizing of the persons of the drama by a pedantic adhesion to a supposed canon of Chinese behaviour. The Dowager Empress speaks as if Queen Elizabeth had been reincarnated. All the actors and actresses did well, but Miss Gertrude Kingston superbly. She acted with intense gusto, and yet never let the part run away with her. She remembered so to be " the Old Buddha" as not to forget that she was a great Queen. She was vehement, passionate, cynical without ever being stagey. Why should not the general public have the pleasure of seeing her and the rest of the play ?
J. Sr. L. S.
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