A New Conan Doyle Play (article 29 december 1909)
A New Conan Doyle Play is an article published in The Sun (New York) on 29 december 1909.
A New Conan Doyle Play
"THE FIRES OF FATE" SHOWS ONE INTERESTING SCENE.
Hamilton Revelle the Chief Actor in a Vivid Melodrama of the Sudan — Striking Scenes of Egyptian Life That Please a First Night Audience.
Simon pure melodrama reigned last night for half an hour on the stage of the Liberty Theatre. It came in the third act of Conan Doyle's play "The Fires of Fate," which was divulged to New York for the first time. The scene of this exciting episode was the Abousir Rook in the Sudan. There a party of tourists were attacked by a troop of dervishes and from this conflict came the awaited thrill in the play. There were the rattle of musketry, the fanatical chantings of the Mohammedans, the shrieks of the white women as they fell into the hands of their savage captors and the struggles of the handful of white men to save them. Nearly every inspiring detail of "The Siege of Lucknow" was utilized to give force to this climax of the drama.
And nearly all of them had their wonted potency in sufficient degree to make the new play successful with its first New York audience.
This situation was not abruptly presented. During the whole of the second act, which showed the party on a daha-beeyah, there had been constant suggestion of the peril that lay in wait for those who entered the territory which the dervishes were ravishing. There was, in fact, little more than preparation for this scene in the whole act, which consisted of rather lengthy conversations and very naive stagecraft. There were scenes that might have supplied the false syntax for any college of the dramatist's art.
The author moved his figures about the stage with the deliberate hand of the novelist rather than the swift, significant movement that the dramatist must inevitably supply. So there came only the warning of the presence of the savages and the intimation that an English officer in the party had fallen in love with an American girl.
This English Colonel, played with great spirit, distinction and naturalneas by Hamilton Revelle, had appeared in the first act to learn from a physician that he was condemned to die within a year from a spinal trouble caused by the cut of a sabre in an Indian war. Only a great nervous shock might save his life. He was unable even in this state to keep from loving the girl, who showed just as plainly her devotion to him. Both were naturally the foremost figures in the raid of the dervishes. Its result to them was most fortunate. Lives there a theatregoer with soul so dead as not to know that the blow from an Arab chief supplied just the shock necessary to restore the Colonel to health?
The play in spite of its undeniable naïveté of construction possesses literary distinction, plausible intimations of character, and is very different in quality from the herd of drama that usually confronts the seeker for such sensations as the third act of "The Fires of Fate" offers. There must have been spectators last night to regret the fact that the drama did not continue in the delightful key of the first act, which passed in the office of a London physician. But more may have loved better the noise and alarms of the scene in the Sudan.
William Hawtrey as an English clergyman, in whom the author drew a real character; Percy Warem, whose spirited acting had much to do with the effectiveness of the dervish enoounter; George Trader, Helen Freeman as an American girl, and Ida Hammer as her aunt supplied the necessary support to Mr. Ravelle.
Then there were two Egyptian scenes of considerable beauty, although there was very little "feeling" of that country to be observed. What is described by the overworked term of atmosphere was rather noticeably lacking throughout.
