Bubbly

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a revue which consists of several little skits, without any pretence of continuity in movie or action, it begins with the usual chaff of its own style of production, in which, it seems, artists are compelled to take part by pressure from the ‘chorus girls’ union’. As conscripts they are seen appealing for exemption to a Tribunal presided over by Arthur Playfair. A brief restaurant episode is followed by a Stone Age scene, in which troglodyte folk make love and other trouble in their prehistoric cave. A rather pointless ditty called ‘bubbles’ suggests vaguely the name of the piece, and leads up to a fairly amusing burlesque of the rehearsal and performance of some village theatricals, in which the vicar makes a fool of himself as a thundering brigand chief. The author is also much worried by the desire of one of the amateurs to introduce an imitation of Martin Harvey and the determination of another to recite ‘the wreck of the Hesperus’. The second act has the wittiest feature of the entertainment in an effort to show how a simple dramatic theme would be treated as high comedy at the St James’s, as melodrama at the Lyceum, as a problem ‘much’ by the Prince’s, and as an American crook-play. A dumb-show drama at a dentist’s called Tia’a tooth for a tooth' and a farce of shopping under the new time-rules wind up the varied entertainment the fun is unequal but occasionally quite smart: and I see nothing to object to in it except the bad taste of introducing the clergyman into the amateur theatricals. This cannot I suppose be forbidden; but the jokes about ‘go to Lyceum’ p. 3 and go to ‘Helen Hunt for it’, p.16 should certainly be excited. Recommended for license. Ernest A. Bendall.