Daddy

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

This is a fair specimen of the old fashioned sentimental melodrama which used to be called 'transpontine'. It is said to be the 'story of the celebrated song' from which it takes its title. That story deals with the trials - literal police-court ones - of a devoted wife, who confesses to the crimes of theft and manslaughter which she believes to have been committed by her husband. As is shown on the stage the circumstantial evidence leading to her conviction is untrustworthy: and it is also shown, rather ingeniously, how it comes to pass that husband and wife each thinks the other guilty. Most of the play is occupied by the tribulation of the heroine in her undeserved shame in her imprisonment, in her separation from her child and in the belief of its father that she is really a criminal. It is all very harrowing if very unlikely; but it has relief in its lack of deliberate 'comic relief' which so often aggravates the distress of playgoers. Crude, but quite inoffensive; and Recommended for License. Ernest A. Bendall