THREE LIVE ACTORS AND SEVERAL GHOSTS

The great difference, sometimes the only one, between a stock company and a company playing but one 'play, is that in the former the spectator unconsciously is apt to hark back to the play of a week ago while witnessing the current spectacle. Unless the repertory actor succeeds in changing his dress, his speech, and his mannerisms most completely with each change of program, the audience is apt to see two plays at once, one with its eyes, the other with its subconscious mind.

This great obstacle of stock acting was for the most part easily handled by the Copley players in last nights production of "Three Live Ghosts", a farce comedy for the writing of which Max Marcin and Frederic Isham collaborated.

Clive, as the Cockney, Jimmy Gubbins, officially declared dead by the War Office: May Ediss as his step-mother; and Alan Mowbray as Lord Leicester, alias "Spoofy", the shell-shocked pal of Jimmy, all turned in performances the genuineness of which completely wiped out the memory of all their former roles. From start to finish their histrionic powers functioned without a discordant note.

Of the other players, only Katherine Standing, Richard Whorf, and Rose Gordon held parts of any considerable importance. Briggs of Scotland Yard was played by C. Wordley Huke, but the part was so typically that of a stage detective, that the importance of the role was hardly proportionate to the amount of time given it. Miss Standing was not quite successful in leaping the obstacle mentioned at the start of this article, and though the mechanics of her acting were effect, her personality was ill-suited to the portrayal of a daughter of a cheap London boarding house. Her Cockney accent left us in doubt as to her true nationality, and her usual grace and charm could not effectively be forced into the awkward mold required of the true Miss Woofers. As Lady Leicester, Miss Standing would have been superb, but as Miss Woofers she was decidedly miscast.

In "Three Live Ghosts", the Copley has a farce of unusual soundness, and last night's capacity audience was kept amused with a steadiness altogether unusual in what so often passes for comedy. The plot deals briefly with the adventures of three English soldiers, all of them officially "pushing up the daisies", who return to England in 1917.

The unwillingness of Mrs. Gubbins to give up the insurance which is being paid her for her son's death her tendency to indulge in what Mrs. Gump called "nips", Spoofy's strange mania for burglarizing anyone on the slightest pretext, and the inevitable mixup with Scotland Yard, all provide wholesome laughs a plenty.

The action gathers momentum with every gesture until the climax is reached with Spoofy's kidnapping of his own child and the robbing of his own safe. A blow on the head finally restores his memory and clears him and his implicated confederates of all blame.