Hotch Potch

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This ‘revue’ is a series of sketches, connected only by the fact that the principal character of each is played by the same low comedian. He begins as the comic village-loafer who will do anything rather than work, but is driven to see a job rather than volunteer for the company in process of enlistment by the local squire. To start with, he figures as the inventor of the old expedient for discovering illicit kisses by a mechanical device which rings a bell whenever the brooch of the lady comes into magnetic contact with the man’s scarf-pin. He then appears as the burlesque manager of a boot-shop and afterwards, in the best of the rather poor skits, as the ‘lonely soldier’ of a gushing widow, who finds that she has been wasting her money and sympathy on the absconding husband of her best friend. He finally distinguishes himself as the temporary keeper of a school for teaching the art of love-making. The humour is rather crude and mechanical but there is no offence in the dialogue acting or songs. Recommended for license. Ernest A. Bendall.