Felix Gets a Month

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is an extravagant light comedy, which outdoes Sir James Barrie in fantasy, but suggests Charles Dickens in highly coloured characterization. Its whimsical plot turns upon an eccentric will of even more than usual eccentricity. By its terms a millionaire uncle revenges himself upon his artist nephew for the practical joke which he played in his studio by making of him a model or a river-god. The young man is to enter the elder one's native town naked as he was born, and to live in it for a calendar month. This he does by stripping himself in a wood, by entering the Mayor's house at night time, by stealing a rug and inducing a girl - who has romantically fancied him a 'river-god' - to steal the Mayor's clothes for him. He then induces the Mayor to sentence him to 'a month', which he is to spend as servant in the house; and while there he manages to score, one by one, off friends and relations who guess, or half guess, his secret, and who scheme to profit by it. Later on we see him disguised as a scarecrow and working for his livelihood as a pavement-artist, until, when half-way through his 'month', he sacrifices his fortune for love of the girl who originally got the clothes for him and gave her heart to him without knowledge of his possible millions. To round off the odd fairy-tale it is finally discovered that this humble helper is the heiress to whom the millions go by default. The odd farrago of nonsensical sentiment and humour may either delight or merely puzzle its hearers; but it can give to none of them the slightest offence. Recommended for Licence Ernest A. Bendall