Heaven at The Helm

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A rather well-written melodrama with an exciting finish. Elsie, the heroine, lives with her widowed and ruined mother in an old castle on the Firth of Forth. The latter opposed her marriage with Capt. Charlton and it was put off till too late, as they had lived together and he went to the front and was killed in saving the life of Lieut. Hope, R. N.. Hope promised the dying man to give Elsie the protection of his name, not knowing hers. But of course he turned up at the castle, now a hydro run by the wife of a German spy. A plot is laid to make hope think Elsie was an immoral person by finding her in his room: she had been told it was now hers. But he discovers her identity and confounds the plotters by marrying her. The latter part of the play is a complicated spying scheme-signalling from the turret to a U-boat and so forth which Elsie, after being unjustly suspected herself, defeats the spies plot and other villains are disposed of and Elsie and Hope are going to be happy ever after. There is no harm in the play, though one may regret the frequency of the ‘unmarried mother’ in contemporary melodramas. I paused, naturally, over the bed-room scene - slip: the pages are not numbered - but there is no offence in it: Hope simply finds Elsie in bed and as soon as matters are explained alarms the house. Moreover the actual bedroom is in a recess of the stage, I gather, with curtains between it and the main stage where the dialogue takes place. Recommended for license, G. S. Street