St Martin's Theatre, London

‘“The Live Wire” appeared at St Martin’s Theatre [on Friday] evening after one postponement. It is by Mr Sidney Blow and Mr Douglas Hoare, and proved to be a fairly exciting game of “Guess Who is the Spy" ... we had a wildly exciting evening at a little play, brightly written and well suited to the present mood’ (The Scotsman, 31 August 1918). ‘Spy plays have a vogue just now. A fresh one started at the St. Martin’s Theatre last night. It contains most of the needful characters, but has handicapped itself by complexity of the documentary evidence. However, enough of action remains to make up ... In a comedy of this kidney the ticklish point is not to hide the identity of the guilty party or parties too long or reveal it too soon. All false trails are legitimate' (Sportsman, 31 August 1918). ‘Messrs. Sydney Blow and Douglas Hoare have constructed their spy play, produced at St. Martin’s Theatre last night, on the familiar principle of making the audience suspect an innocent person and turning suspicion away from the real criminal. It may be it good principle, but it has great disadvantage: the audience has to take the plotting at second hand. We hear about it, but never see it ... although the denouement fell a trifle flat, the play was full of exciting incidents, and was received with enthusiasm' (Daily News (London), 31 August 1918). ‘The clever authors of the latest and jolliest of spy plays, “The Live Wire,” have realized the essentials of this type of drama to a T. From beginning to end there is continuous action, no sooner have they extricated one or another of the characters from the tightest of tight corners than somebody else with equal claim to our sympathy is in another congested angle, and tremendous demand is being made on their coolness and resource. The real spy is splendidly camouflaged until the very end, the only way to find him is to ask yourself for whom you would be least sorry if he (or she) turned out a bad egg, and even then you hesitate between two, at least we did. Then again the play is not too serious, everybody is gay' (The Era, 4 September 1918). ‘One of those plays one could not put down until one had seen it. Not a play at all, but thrilling enough and blind man’s buff enough to keep an audience going. Especially distorted to prove that one has no idea of actualities, not even of the actualities of the inside of a big newspaper office, and yet quite convincing in its thrills ... One thing more: in the midst of the ruck of stuff now being performed at most London theatres it is a joy to find a decent exciting play, well acted throughout, holding a decently excited audience. In these days of brass band jokes, American farces, and lace and stocking vaudevilles, a good detective story comes like a breath of fresh air from Fleet Street' (Truth, 4 September 1918). ‘A very lively, ingenious, and entertaining (perhaps unconsciously as well as designedly) spy play is The Live Wire … and it was received with acclamation by the bulk of the audience … It is a piece entirely of incident, without any attempt at characterisation, and chock full of such time honoured stage devices as false scents, “red herrings,” and artfully devised schemes for arousing suspicions with regard to the wrong persons’ (The Stage, 5 September 1918). ‘If the whole art of the spy-play is to keep your audience making wrong guesses at your secret, as no doubt it is, then Mr. Douglas Hoare and Mr. Sydney Blow are artists at the game, and successful artists. It is safe to say that no one in the first-night audience, until the confession came, had his eye fixed on the actual culprit; so that the playwrights pulled off their surprise, and provided their audience with a thrill satisfactorily enough. Where their story lies open to criticism is in its picture of the working of a newspaper office. Not only the proprietor-editor himself, but his staff generally, seemed to hang round doing little but talk and amuse themselves, while the paper made itself. In Fleet Street a live wire run on these lines would be dead in no time' (Illustrated London News, 7 September 1918). 'It is rather overloaded with incident, the interest of which, though cumulative in theory, is not always so in practice, while the lines, never very brilliant, are a mixture of good and bad. Often a point is overlaboured for the sake of rounding off the speech, after the stage interest in that moment’s business has evaporated, and occasionally the characters are made to utter those fatal sentences which make the audience smile in the wrong place. I should say that in peace time such a play as “The Live Wire” would have been a dead one in a fortnight, but nowadays spy plays obtain a topical success, for their characters are popular simply because they are spies or else spy catchers. Therefore the dramatist, who cannot build up character has the option of sticking to incident only ... What is more likely to harm the play than its improbability is its construction, for, although evidently pieced together very carefully, it yet has the effect of a number of children playing a series of small games than of grown-ups engaged in one straightforward match 'Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 5 October 1918). 'A Home Letter to Soldiers Overseas (For the Daily Malta Chronicle) London, October 23rd 1918. Every now and again Theatreland is seized with an epidemic of a certain type of play. At one time no play was complete unless it contained a bedroom scene, at another period romantic costume plays were the rage, then there have been musical comedy booms and Chinese play booms and American drama booms and all sorts of others. To-day there seems to be an urgent demand for “Spy” plays. There are at least six theatres at which the hero or heroine or both achieve a happy ending by circumventing the machinations of a transparently stupid German spy. After a series of preposterously impossible situations the plays always move to a foregone conclusion and every one goes home happy - especially the managers and authors who are simply coining money ... if you like this brand of melodrama you can choose between “The Freedom of the Seas,” “The Live Wire”, “The Hidden Hand”, “The Luck of the Navy”, “By Pigeon Post” and “The Female Hun.” And, I believe, there are others yet to come. Spy plays are not the only epidemic from which London is suffering at the moment. An old friend, influenza, has descended upon us in a rather new form, and is rivalling the war as a topic of conversation’ (Daily Malta Chronicle and Garrison Gazette, 11 November 1918). 'Although a frankly artificial war-time spy-drama, it affords quite good entertainment, for it is full of thrills and tense moments while the bewildering twists and turns in its plot do not admit of a moment’s inattention on the part of an audience - which is kept guessing, moreover, all the time as to who will turn out to be the real culprit. In this respect, and even to a greater degree than most plays of its kind, “The Live Wire” triumphantly overrides what I believe to be considered an accepted principle of dramatic construction, namely, that an author should never mystify his audience. It must be admitted that Messrs. Blow and Hoare display considerable mental ingenuity to keep up the suspense and curiosity. They disguise the real villain by every means known to them. They do their worst to throw suspicion elsewhere (Civil & Military Gazette (Lahore), 21 November 1918).

‘Acting Competition. After the preliminary trials of the R.A.D.A., Lady Benson’s School, the Guildhall School, and the Central School of Speech Training in this competition, the two first named played off the final at the St. Martin’s on Monday. The better part of the day was occupied with the performances, the test pieces being the final scene from “Antony and Cleopatra,” a scene from “The Clandestine Marriage,” and Bernard Shaw’s “Blanco Posnet,” the two schools following each other selection by selection. The award went to the R.A.D.A., which thus becomes the first holder of the Critics’ Circle Shield. Mr. Robert Harris, of the R.A.D.A., who appeared as Julius Caesar, Lovewell Colman’s comedy, and Blanco Posnet, won the Reandean men’s scholarship of a three years’ engagement. The award of a similar ladies’ scholarship was deferred. The judges were Messrs. St. John Ervine, S. W. Carroll, and Basil Dean, Mrs. Searle, and Miss Haidee Wright’. The Stage, Thursday 19 July 1923. Also reported in The People, 22 July 1923.