Theatre Production - Cousin Kate

The quarrels of lovers are so easily brought about, and generally so difficult of adjustment, that it is a matter of surprise that more people do not develop the qualities that go to make a Cousin Kate. For the lack of just that firmness, tempered with a faculty for persuasiveness among most of one’s friends, makes the value of such a capable one as Kate Curtis at once appreciated.

PRESS REVIEW

(Daily Mail [London, UK] - 19th June, 1903)
"COUSIN KATE"
SUCCESSFUL COMEDY AT HAYMARKET THEATRE

Mr. Hubert Henry Davies, who has already scored a triumph with "Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace," has again attained succeSS with "Cousin Kate," the comedy presented at the Haymarket last evening. Comedy finds congenial soil there, and "Cousin Kate," if unconvincing, is very pleasant comedy.

The piece is endowed with very many attractive externals. The author has the gift of writing easy and entertaining dialogue, and in face of that certain weaknesses of construction and characterisation may be condoned. Mr. Davies tells the story of a young lady jilted - partly through her own fault - by an Irish lover, whose rapid affections quite sustain the fabled Hibernian standard of amatory fickleness. The disappointed girl and her mother anticipate a smoothing of difficulties when Cousin Kate, a diplomatic friend of the family, arrives upon the scene.

Unfortunately, Cousin Kate has met the Irish jilt in the train, and has instantaneously fallen in love with him - a feeling reciprocated by the cavalier of electric emotions. This encounter is the basis of the finest comedy scene in the play, and one received with undivided favour. Mr. Davies is here seen at his best, and the inconsistencies of the story fade into the background.

People in decent society - not even professional novelists like Cousin Kate - do not engage in keen flirtations in railway trains, nor follow that up with desperate love-making in empty country houses, without having gone through the formality of an introduction and without knowing each other's names. Nor do clergymen of the Church of England - not even members of the locum tenens portion of it, which the author appears to regard as an inferior variety - attempt to propose to young ladies at the moment they learn that the young ladies aforesaid are suffering the keenest grief and mortification at being "thrown over" within two days of the wedding. These and other points convince us that Mr. Davies's powers of natural observation are less conspicuous than his talent for writing cheery dialogue. The third act threatens in parts to become Gibertian in its situations, but the jilt pairs off with cousin kate, whilst the priggish - and we hope and believe impossible - parson is given the hand of the Irishman's original discard.

To Miss Ellis Jeffreys belong the honours of the night. Once again the high spirits and infinite tact of this resourceful and charming lady carried her to success. The demonstration accorded her at the fall of the curtain was both cordial and deserved in her case. Mr. Rudge Harding made the most of the Joseph Surface curate, and a little boy introduced into the cast would have been better omitted. Miss Beatrice Ferrar and Miss Carlotta Addison were quite efficient, but Mr. Cyril Maude failed to realise the character of the Irish Lothario. This was a part in which the late Dion Boucicault would have revelled. A very cordial greeting was given the young author at the close, and it is rarely at the theatre nowadays that the night is so "filled with music."

Doubtless Amy Spencer's uncertainty as to which of two men she really loved made it all the more easy for her to quarrel with the one to whom she was engaged; and but for the fact that the wedding was fixed to take place two or three days after the fatal breach, her family might have been well content to leave her to manage her own affairs. For, although Heath Desmond has many personal charms, the temperament of an artist is variable and certainly not as sedate as the good folk of the country side would expect to find in the husband of Miss Spencer.

For, if the truth be told, Miss Spencer is prim, and her prudish ideas are little to the taste of Heath Desmond, who now and then resents them. She herself has suspicions as to whether she could not do more good in the world as the wife of a parson - the Rev. James Bartlett, to wit - than as the wife of a man whose views so often conflict with hers.

Now we shall not be too hard on Mr. Bartlett if, knowing of the breach between Amy Spencer and Heath, and knowing also that the latter is prepared to regard the quarrel as final, he should grasp the opportunity to advance his own cause - not perhaps in a manly and open way; not perhaps in a manner our younger brothers would describe as good cricket. But by vague suggestions, and by subtle influences brought to bear on poor Mrs. Spencer, who, bewildered at the situation, hails the advent of Cousin Kate with unconcealed satisfaction.

It is true that Cousin Kate is a woman of the world and a very sensible one. She is also an authoress of considerable repute, her novels - so far as we can gather - being of the "problem" order. But she has the artistic temperament as well, and love at first sight is the outcome of the combination. For on her way to visit her relatives, a young Irishman, travelling in the same carriage, had so ingratiated himself, that Kate is bewildered at the tumult he leaves behind in her heart. The acquaintance, if it was short, was one of those that mature quickly when two genial, kindly natures are concerned. Besides, there was a lunch basket, and only one. What wonder that it became a link in the new made friendship when the charming possessor insisted on sharing the contents with her companion. So that, sown in promising soil and nurtured in congenial surroundings, the casual acquaintance rapidly ripened into a deep and absorbing love.

But it is the troubles of her kinsfolk and not her own love affairs that occupy Kate on her arrival. It is not a difficult matter for the skilful novelist to gauge the necessities of the situation she finds. At first inclined to regard Heath as a "monster," recklessly jeopardising the happiness of an inexperienced girl ten years his junior, she begins to feel more than sympathy for him under the circumstances that Amy is induced to describe.

The fact is that men of artistic temperament find it difficult to bind themselves to the small conventions that are adopted without question by other people, and Heath is no exception. To Amy his indifference is shocking. She begs he will not paint on Sunday, and he jokingly promises to paint only religious subjects. Amy is very serious on this and other matters, Heath more or less flippant, and the quarrel assumes serious proportions when Heath suggests that Amy does not know what she is talking about.

lt is this story that Kate hears from Amy’s faltering lips, and with shrewd common sense she explains to the younger girl her folly in dictating to a sensible man - charming in every respect - a line of conduct in insignificant matters which he is far better able to decide for himself. It is at the end of this interview that Mr. Bartlett’s influence in the matter becomes apparent. But Cousin Kate has taken an unmistakable dislike to the smooth, glib parson, and she is determined that the engagement shall be renewed without delay and that Amy shall not lose such a "nice man."

At her earnest suggestion, therefore, Heath is recalled by a letter of which Mr. Bartlett is the bearer. All is bustle once more. Arrangements for the wedding are pushed on and Cousin Kate goes down to air the cottage which is being prepared for the young couple, and to her astonishment the stranger of her railway romance enters confidently by the window, and after some hesitation and resistance on Kate’s part, sets about collecting material for tea which his companion as eagerly prepares.

lt is a jovial little party, a deux, suddenly interrupted by a declaration of love on the part of the Irishman and a confession on Kate’s part that completes her own and his happiness. It all seems so natural, so sweetly reasonable, that not even his name transpires, until Amy enters the cottage, and then she discovers in her lover the man she has successfully called back to Amy’s side, and the romance that means so much to them both now, is over.

But Heath is desperate. He has realised that he does not love Amy. Of her attitude towards Mr. Bartlett or of Mr. Bartlett’s towards her he knows nothing. Neither does he know that it was at the urgent plea of Cousin Kate that Amy had written the letter recalling him. As a last resort he consults Bartlett. While he was free - he tells him - he fell in love with another woman; what is he to do? Bartlett offers to strike a bargain. "If," he says, "you are willing to break your engagement now, I am ready to propose to her myself."

Heath indignantly rejects the arrangement, and sorrowfully realises he has nothing to do but keep his promise to Amy. Bartlett makes a desperate attempt to intervene by abusing Heath’s confidence, but Amy stops him. If there is a confession to be made Heath himself shall make it. As a matter of fact she tells him, when they are alone, she has a confession to make. Then for the first time Heath learns of her preference for Bartlett, of her determination, however, not to selfishly yield to it and so cause him the great pain that such a breach - she believes - must bring to him. Having satisfied himself that Amy really prefers Bartlett he releases her from her engagement, and the readjustment brings with it the happy ending to both pairs of lovers.

DAME FASHION'S DIARY - (From "Black and White" [London, UK] - 11th July, 1903)

In Cousin Kate, Mr. Hubert Davies' most popular new play at the Haymarket, Cousin Kate, the chief interest, wears throughout the play just one frock. It is a positive tour de force this of Miss Ellis Jeffreys, the more so as she looks perfectly charming the whole time, and that somehow, unless one were specially noticing the frocks, one would scarcely be aware of it.

Miss Jeffreys' costume points to the superior wisdom of getting a pretty blouse to one's tailor costume of its own colour, for it is by appearing first in full costume of coat and skirt and presently doffing the coat, so that she is seen in just the blouse and skirt, that Miss Jeffreys so cleverly avoids monotony. It is a delightful coat and skirt this of pale grey cloth, with the modish coarse linen thread Cluny lace as adornment, and it is of grey double chiffon with white lace that the blouse is formed. The Breton sailor of white chip straw with blue and white cornflowers and green, unripe ears of corn that she wears with this costume is also simply charming.

Cousin Kate is a triumph in playwriting; it is drawing packed houses independent of a single risky situation or covert insinuation in the dialogue, and without a single duke or even reference to a duke or any other being liable to have his birth retailed by Burke, and with the simplest scenery and the simplest frocks, Miss Ellis Jeffreys, as I have said, wearing one throughout, and Miss Beatrice Ferrar, the mentally elevated young person, Amy Spencer, passing through the most momentous moments of her life in just her homely blouse and skirt and the simplest tailor costume. Cousin Kate is just splendidly written and splendidly acted, and proves that good writing and good acting will fill a playhouse ever and always, and by a good play we mean nowadays one that is first and foremost bright and amusing. We are not so silly as to pretend we go to the play to be instructed.

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