Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Monday 24 November 1913, page 4


"THE MONK AND THE WOMAN."

Frederick Melville's eminently successful drama, The Monk and the Woman, was revived for a brief period by the George Willoughby Company at the Adelphi Theatre on Saturday evening. A large audience assembled on the occasion, and throughout the evening the play was received with the same enthusiasm that marked the last production,.

A play of the type of the "The Monk and the Woman" is certain to cause bitter feeling among a certain section of the community, but, casting all biassed opinion aside, it must be admitted that the piece is a clean, healthy, melodrama, singularly free from that sordidness which has done so much to bring melodrama into disrepute. That it is melodrama of the most artificially manufactured type, no one would hesitate for a moment to doubt. Clean melodrama, however, has a decidedly edifying effect on the great masses, and in the present instance the "book" contains religious phrases as fervent as are to be found anywhere. One has only to listen to the applause after these same phrases to gauge what moral effect the action has on the audience. The play demonstrates in a very forcible manner the power of Love, without which the world would be a place of desolation. Under its divine ""influence, Paul, the monk, finds that he was not created in this world to spend his days in the gloomy cells of a secluded monastery; and Lane, the little pearl of the court, the dainty outterfly fluttering from flower to flower, awakens to contemplation of the more serious things of life. Incidentally, a couple of villains-De Montralo and the King and a minor here in the person ofCaptain Ormonde, are thrown in to emphasise the purity of the love of the monk for

the woman.

The piece was presented again with, out, the whole, a strong cast, though some changes in the characters had been madenot for the good. Mr. George Cross aged penned again as the kind and pure hearted Novice, Paul, and was received with noteworthy applause. There was a now Island in the charming person of Miss Vera Remee. The newcomer invested the opening scenes with a lightness and gaiety that disappeared, as, under the influence of Cupid, the true and womanly side of her character was brought out. Mr. Arthur Shirley, also a newcomer, was not particularly convincing as the King. A change was made in the character of Father Ignatius, the part being taken this time by Mr. Charlie Taylor, Mr. T, W. Lloyd made a capital villain as Henri de Montrale, and Messrs. Frank Crossley and Frank Reiss were again successful as the monks Peter and Jabez, the former of whom would "rather be a coward for five minutes than a dead man for the rest of his life," The staging, under the direction of Mr. Charlie Taylor, was excellent.