IRVING THE SECOND.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2716, 22 January 1910, Page 4 (Supplement)

IRVING THE SECOND.

; ■« • / Mr. H. B. Irving seems to be steadily growing. If nothing happens to bar his progress, it will not be long before lie wiil be generally acknowledged as the legitimate heir of his father's position as head of the English stage. He will probably advance more rapidly when he. escapes from the troublesome comparisons suggested by. liis present identification with some of his father’s most famous parts. Just now lie has made a great, hit in a revival of “The Lyons Mail” in the London Queen’s Theatre. The London “Times” (the words, of course, ere not Mr. "Waklty’s) says: “Mr. Irving’s performance last night, when, for the second time, he revived the play, was intensely powerful, and moved the whole of the audience, and not only the pit and the gallery, to a display of real old Lyceum feeling. In’ tlio last scenes especially, when Pubosc ,is watching the execution from his garret window, gloating with bestial ferocity over the impending downfall of the innocent Lesurques, till he is trapped and brought to bay like a beast in a cage, lie reached a high nitch of really fine acting. The genius of the son is, at al] events, the same as that of his father in this respect, that he turns what in the hands of many good actors would bo mere melodrama into a vivid and real tragedy. The distinction between the two characters was preserved thi'ougiiout without a flaw. Looking at Mr. Erving’s face, first as the good Lesurques, and then as the vile Dubose, it is almost terrible to > think that the same face, with practically no change of make-up, can show such extremes of virtue and vice.” .During the last ten years the sea has washed away about 400 acres of land from the coast of England, but in other places has added nearly 20,000 acres, at present useless land. ,