Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, April 2, 1919 by Various (sight word books .txt) 📕

There was an exuberant "coon"

Who invented a horrible tune

For a horrible dance

Which suggested the prance

Of a half-epileptic baboon.

"The Prime Minister threw aside precedent to such an extent that he got out of his depth and went on his knees when we were on the rocks."—Letter in "The Globe."

When we get out of our depth we never think of kneeling on the bottom.

"VICTORY."

MR. MACDONALD HASTINGS has invented, and committed, yet another new sin—that of attempting to do a CONRAD novel into a three-act play. Fifteen, possibly; but three? We hardly think. What every Conradist knows is that you can't compress that master of subtlety without losing the master's dominant quality—atmosphere; that it's not so much the things he says but the queer way and the odd order in which he says them that matter. He is not precisely a filmable person.

And yet, all things considered, the potter has produced a tolerable pot, and we may write down his fault of extreme foolhardiness as venial. What, however, Mr. CONRAD himself thought of the rehearsals, if he attended them—but perhaps we need not go into that.

It is easy to see the attraction, for the players, of the series of star parts provided by the exciting story. You have first the eccentric, misjudged Swede, Heyst (the adapter makes him an Englishman, perhaps wisely, as our stage takes no account of Swedes), come from self-banishment on a far Pacific island—a complex Conradian personality. Then his arch-enemy, Schomberg, lieutenant of reserve, shady hotel-keeper, sensualist and craven, with his insane malice. To these enter as pretty a company of miscreants as ever sailed the Southern seas: the sinister Jones, misogynist to the point of fine frenzy, nonconformist in the matter of card-playing, and thereafter frank bandit with a high ethic as to the superiority of plain robbery under arms over mere vulgar swindling—a gentleman with a code, in fact; his strictly incomparable "secretary," Ricardo of the rolling eyes and gait and deathly treacherous knife, philogynist sans phrase; and Pedro, their groom, a reincarnated Caliban. It may also be noted that Heyst has a freak servant, the disappearing Wang, whom the adapter uses, I suppose legitimately, as a kind of clown. And then, finally, there is a charming and unusual heroine, Lena, still in her teens, but of real flesh and blood, innocent and persecuted, daughter of a drunken fiddler (deceased), herself fiddling in a tenth-rate orchestra at Schomberg's hotel, wherein it is not intended that the music shall be the chief attraction to the guests.

Heyst is Perseus to Lena's Andromeda, carrying her off to his island out of lust's way. But dragon Schomberg has a sting left in his malicious tale, told to the unlikely trio of scoundrels, to the effect that Heyst has ill-gotten treasure hoarded on his island. Dragon Ricardo persuades his chief to the adventure of attaching it. A fine brew of passion and action forsooth: Lena passionately adoring; the aloof Heyst passing suddenly from indifference to ardour; the bestial Ricardo in pursuit of his startled quarry; and gentleman Jones intent on non-existent booty and rapt out of him self by cynical fury at the discovery of an unsuspected woman in the case. And while Mr. CONRAD in his novel drives all these to a relentless doom Mr. HASTINGS contrives a happy ending, which goes perilously near an anticlimax, with the hero on his knees and the heroine pointing up to heaven and claiming a "victory" quite other than their creator intended. But then he knew perfectly well that nobody wants to come to see Miss MARIE LÖHR killed.