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| Evelyn Millard (1869-1941) |
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Click here for Evelyn Millard biography. Scroll down for Gallery Some breif facts:
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"The Crisis"
Adapted from Pierre Berton's "La Rencontre" by Rudolf Besier
Produced at the New Theatre on 31st August, 1910.
Miss Evelyn Millard, Messrs. Norman McKinnel, Lennox Pawle, Athol Stewart, Douglas Lambert, Misses E. Martheze, and Sarah Brooke.
Yet another attempt to transfer a French play to an English theatre without the French atmosphere! And another failure! The old, old story of a husband and wife, another man and another woman. The wife has married for position and money, like so many of them do; the husband married for what he thought was love. The coming of the other woman shows him that he was wrong, and a discovered "affair" between his wife and the other man confirms it. One or two needless and ridiculous characters sandwiched in between, and the thing is done.
Now what I want to know is why does Miss Evelyn Millard elect to associate her name with such a piece as "The Crisis"? Not one member of the cast could enhance his or her reputation by even the finest acting in a play of this description. It reeks with vulgarity-a fair example of which occurs in the scene between the two women. I consider it a distinctly immoral play, and one that should never have been seen on the more or less clean stage of the London theatre.
On the evening of my visit to the New Theatre I was alone. I was glad of that. Several men who sat with lady friends looked extremely uncomfortable. If there is one thing more objectionable than another it is prudery on the stage, but if plays like "The Crisis" are to become a substitute for prudery there is a poor look-out for drama in this country! The lack of dramatists has given birth to a young army of adapters, and the latter invariably turn to France for their material. Then the trouble commences. Each sentence is translated accurately, and what pleased or amused a people whose morals, inclinations and manners are entirely foreign to our own is served up under a new name in the hope that we shall appreciate it. But we don't!
Had the play been worth it, the amount of energy put into their work by, Miss Evelyn Millard and Miss Sarah Brooke would have reaped its own reward. As it was, both performances suggested artificiality. Mr. Lennox Pawle was funny when he was supposed to be, but funnier still when he tried to be pathetic. Mr. Norman McKinnel's work was done in deadly earnest. The play was well costumed and mounted.
Playgoer and Society Illustrated, Vol II No 12, September 1910.