The Northern Guardian. — 1892-08-23 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

THE GAIETY THEATRE, WEST HARTLEPOOL.  "THE SILVER KING." Yesterday evening, before a crowded audience, Mr Charles Dornton's company produced the celebrated drama, by Henry Arthur Jones and Henry ..uan, under the above name. For many years now this play, in which Wilson Barrett and G. S. Willard first showed the world what stuff they were made of, has held the boards with a tenacity which will probably endure for a still longer period in the future. With the plot of the piece the public is quite familiar now. The idea of a man being made to believe that he has committed a murder when in reality the deed was done by another was a distinctly original departure, and it is splendidly conceived and worked out. Wilfred Denver, a business man of rather loose habits, addicted to betting and gambling, has got into a fast set, and there meets one Geoffrey Ware, a young engineer, who makes love to Mrs Denver. While in a house in Hatton Garden, Denver quarrels with Ware, and during the altercation there enters Captain Herbert Skinner, alias the Spider, a "gentlemanly burglar," who is in search of jewellery, drugs Denver and shoots Ware. When Denver comes back to consciousness, and sees the engineer lying dead upon the floor, he imagines that his hand has done the deed. He flees from justice, with the police on his track. A railway collision occurs in which it is supposed that Denver is killed, but he escapes, goes to America, and under the name of John Franklin makes a huge fortune out of silver, hence his title of "The Silver King." But, despite his success, the thought of his crime, and of the wife and children whom he has left behind him, haunt him and he returns to England, where he finds Mrs Denver and the little ones in deep distress, makes himself known to their faithful old servant Jakes, and supplies them with funds, the source of which they know not. Gradually the suspicion comes upon him that he is not really guilty of the murder of Geoffrey , Ware, and after much trouble and weary waiting he at length discovers the truth. Mr A. Clifton Alderson's performance as Wilfred Denver was a magnificent piece of acting, quite equal, in our opinion, to that of Mr Wilson Barrett • while Mr Alderson possesses a pure voice, capable of every inflection—a quality in which Mr Barrett's organ is rather deficient. As the dissipated business man, as th, fugitive from justice, es the rich merchant, first overpowered with the sense of guilt, and then triumphant in the knowledge of innocence, as the husband and father restored to his wife and children, and finally as the determined and coolheaded man facing his enemy, his acting was splendid and "fetched" the audience thoroughly. Mr Stanley Pringle took the part of the Spider, immortalised by Mr E. S. Willard, and his rendering of the role of the fashionably-dressed, polished, and gentlemanly scoundrel was little inferior to that of the great actor we have mentioned. Miss Agnes I Verity as Mrs Denver (Miss Eastlake's old part), gave an extremely good rendering of her part, her fit of hysterical joy in the scene where her husband . lis restored to her being remarkably fine. Harry , Corkett, a fast, horse-racing, young Cockney "City 'Clerk," who gets into trouble through his , association with men like the Spider, is played by Mr T. N. Walker, and the role does not at all suffer in that gentleman's hands. Itlr E. J. George as Daniel ales the faithful old servant, Mr G. C. Doughty as Geoffrey Ware, Messrs C. Otley and F. Wells as two rascally friends of the Spider, and Mr Gordon Cameron as Samuel Baxter, a smart detective, are all admirable. Miss May Thorne as Olive Skimmer, the Spider's unfortunate, though loving and faithful wife, gives an extremely powerful and pathetic performance, while a word of praise is due to Miss Lillie and Master Willie Hartford, for their charming and natural acting as the children of Wilfred Denver. The piece is splendidly mounted, and last night was rapturously applauded.  :ern,