* * * * *

AT THE PLAY.

"REMNANT."

I wish now that I had not been compelled to postpone my visit to the
Royalty, for I think the fall of Baghdad must have put me a bit above
myself. Anyhow, I was less moved than usual by the triumph of virtue and
the downing of vice; and permitted myself to wonder how a play like
_Remnant_ ever found its way into the Royalty (of all theatres), and what
Mr. DENNIS EADIE (of all actors) was doing in this galley, this
melted-butter boat. And indeed there were moments when I could see that Mr.
EADIE himself shared my wonder, if I rightly interpreted certain signs of
indifference and detachment in his performance. I even suspected a sinister
intention in the title, though, of course, Messrs. MORTON and NICCODEMI
didn't really get their play off in the course of a bargain sale of
superannuated goods.

Apart from the Second Act, where Miss MARIE LÖHR (looking rather like a
nice Dutch doll) delivered the blunt gaucheries of _Remnant_ with a
delightfully stolid naïveté, the design of the play and its simple little
devices might almost have been the work of amateurs. The sordid quarrels
between _Tony_ and his preposterous mistress (whom I took to be a model,
till I found that he was only an artist in steam locomotives) were
extraordinarily lacking in subtlety. In all this Bohemian business one
looked in vain for a touch of the art of MURGER. What would one not have
given for something even distantly reminiscent of the _Juliet_ scene--"_et
le pigeon chantait toujours_"? And it wasn't as if this was supposed to be