Mary Rose is in fact a girl who couldn't grow up, because whenever she visited a little mystery island in the Outer Hebrides "they" who lived in a "lovely, lovely, lovely" vague world beyond these voices would call her vaguely (to Mr. Norman O'Neill's charming music), and she would as vaguely return with no memory of what had passed and no change in her physical condition. This didn't matter so much when, as a mere child, she disappeared for thirty days; but when, mother of an incomparable heir of two, she was rapt away in the middle of a picnic for twenty-five years, and returned to find a husband, mother and father inexplicably old and changed, and dreadfully silent about her babe—well, you see for yourself how hopeless everything was. As if there were not enough real tragedy in the world and it were necessary to invent!

I don't think it fair to tell you any more. You shouldn't suffer these thrills at second-hand. But I can say that, in spite of making it a point of professional honour to try to keep a warm spine and check the unbidden tear from trickling down my nose (which makes you look such an ass before a cynical colleague during the intervals), I was beaten in both attempts. The "effects" were astonishingly well contrived by both author and producer (Mr. Holman Clark). You were not let down at the supreme moment by a hurried shuffle of dimly seen forms or the click of an electrician's gear suggesting too solid flesh. The house was in a queer way stunned by the poignancy of the last scene between the young ghost-mother and the long-sought unrecognised son, and had to shake itself before it could reward with due applause the fine playing of as perfect a cast as I have seen for a long time. There's no manner of doubt that Sir James "got it over" (as they say) all right.

Miss Fay Compton makes astonishing strides. Her Mary Rose had adorable shy movements, caresses, intonations, wistfulnesses. These were traits of Mary Rose, not tricks of Miss Compton. And they escaped monotony—supreme achievement in the difficult circumstances. Mr. Robert Loraine in the doubled rÔles of Mary Rose's husband and son, showed a very fine skill in his differentiation of the husband's character in three phases of time and development, and of the son's, with its family likeness and individual variation. Mr. Ernest Thesiger, who seems to touch nothing he does not adorn, gave a fine rendering of as charming a character as ever came out of the Barrie box—the superstitious, learned, courteous crofter's son, student of Aberdeen University, temporary boatman and (later) minister. He did his best incidentally, by rowing away without casting off, to corroborate the local legend that the queer little island sometimes disappeared. Miss Mary Jerrold was just the perfect Barrie mother (of Mary Rose). Mr. Arthur Whitby's parson, Mr. Norman Forbes' squire, Miss Jean Cadell's housekeeper, left no chinks in their armour for a critic's spleenful arrow.

T.

"It was one of those perfect June nights that so seldom occur except in August."

—— Magazine.

The result of Daylight-saving, no doubt.