Dora Barton (1880-1966)

"The Black Cat"
A Play, in three acts, by Dr. John Todhunter.
Opera Comique Theatre, Friday, December 8th, 1893.
(with Dora Barton as Undine)

"Remember, my dear," says one of the characters in this piece, "we're not acting in an Ibsen play." But that is just where Miss Macfarlane, the massive, the prosaic and precise, makes a mistake. For "The Black Cat" is nothing more nor less than an Ibsen play "up to date." It is just the story of Beata, Rebecca West, and Eosmer of 'Kosmersholm,' adapted, modernised, and very appropriately "framed" in a studio in, say, the Melbury Road. In almost every particular the stories tally. Allowance must be made for the migration from "suburban" Norway, to what Mr. Buchanan, with brutal veracity, calls "Imperial Cockneydom," and for the inevitable weakening of principles and motives occasioned thereby; but otherwise "The Black Cat" jumps with the "White Horses" of Eosmersholm, and when the tragic end arrives, we find ourselves groping in a similar mist of bewilderment.

Arthur Denham is an amateur artist and professional cynic, with a literary range from Michelet to Herbert Spencer, and a Satanic capacity for citing Scripture for his purpose. He is married to a woman whom he does not understand and who does not understand him; and they have one girl child who understands both so well that she plays off the indulgent, easy-going father against her grizzling, discontented, nagging mother, and thus widens the gulf between them. Both have sharp tongues, and neither is diffident about speaking to the point. The result is not sunshine, and when Mrs. Tremaine an old schoolfellow of Constance Denham appears, the domestic forecast is stormy. Blanche Tremaine, as luck will have it, is the last person in the world who should set foot in this divided household. She is a lady of "experience" indeed it should be plural, for, having suffered divorce, and marriage with the co-respondent, she is still ready to "go through fire" for some one else. Who that some one is may be guessed when it is said that this lady has lovely eyes, a musical voice, seductive ways, and sits to Denham as a model.

Mrs. Denham happens to enter when they have, after playing with fire for some little time, just burned their fingers, and finds them locked in a passionate embrace. Her considerate offer to depart "forever" is rejected. The fin-de-siecle culprits volunteer to meet no more, and there seemingly is the end of the "comedy," as Mrs. Tremaine terms it. But Constance of the rigid, frigid principles declines to see it in this light. She is a "self-tormentor," "too anxious about life to live," and although "hungering for love," predestined to adopt an unloveable attitude at the critical time. Denham is for the moment sincerely contrite. His windy chatter about "the divine mistress," "the divine matron," and "the divine virgin," is only so much gas. Like "my lady's page," he must "evermore be tattling." This fleshly paddling with the seductive divorcee has satisfied his artistic needs. He is prepared to listen to "the ghost that haunts him duty." He hasn't really the courage of his convictions, that a man may be happy with three wives "more, verges on polygamy" and if his wife cared a jot for this shambling, shifty creature this Tomlinson of the studio, "a stook of print and book," but without a soul of his own she would allow the child to unite them. But, no! Though anything further removed from tragedy than this model flirtation could scarcely be conceived, it must be prussic acid from the cheffonier or nothing.

And over her dead body the remorseful Denham and the horrorstricken Blanche part, he in a feeble passion of regret for his dead wife, she with a last hot whisper of passion for him. The tragedy lends a stagy look to the whole play, which without this binding of crape would be unstagy to a degree. Very brightly, at points brilliantly, written in the manner of Mr. Oscar Wilde the earlier acts are clever and amusing in the extreme. Two characters in particular, an art-critic and a minor poet, have, like the flowers that bloom in the spring, nothing to do with the case, but they provide rare entertainment. While they were on the stage, the comedy dialogue was brilliant. Indeed the poet who has "seen life" once, and does not wish to be asked to see it again, and whose last volume consists of "Three Quatrains," for poetry is impossible at any length is the most amusing figure seen for many a day; and had Mr. Barnett played with more variety, the comical effect would have been immense. Mr. Bucklaw, too, representing the painter soaked in cynicism, was too consistently heavy and depressed, and thus weakened the impression due to his rough, strong, effective acting. Mr. Doone's Irish art-critic was a faithful study of Mr. Leonard Boyne in his quieter moods, and Miss Dora Barton proved herself a child-actress so clever and natural as to be infinitely touching in her naturalness. Miss Caine, though unequal to the tragedy of the part, which required a Sarah Bernhardt or Jane Hading, played with so surprising and pathetic a power of reality that her work, as usual, challenged admiration by its truthfulness and restrained force and charm; and Miss Keegan presented an equally actual study of the insidious and fascinating lady who is "fond of men." Indeed, were it only for the sake of these two actresses, Dr. Todhunter's witty and interesting if inconsistent play (cleansed of its tragedy blot) should be seen again.

'The Theatre', Vol XXI, January 1894.