A fairly preposterous start, you will say; yet the delightful naturalness which Miss GLADYS COOPER and Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY bring to the situation gives it almost an air of possibility. But, once we are at Ostend, and have been introduced to _Trotter's_ incredibly inappropriate fiancee (she is a niece of the same aunt and has followed under protection of a tame escort), we are prepared to launch freely and fearlessly into the rough and tumble of farce. It is in vain that Miss GLADYS COOPER, over her _petit dejeuner_, preserves a natural demeanour, even to the point of talking with her mouth full; the light humour of the First Act declines to the verge of buffoonery. The devastating confusions which ensue in the matter of identity and relationship (in our author's Ostend you assume, till corrected, that all couples are married); the intervention of the local gendarmerie, headed by a British detective; the arrest of half the party (including the aunt, arrived in perfect health and ignorance _en route_ for England) on a nameless charge in connection with _Emily's_ suspected abduction--all this is in the best Criterion manner. [Illustration: EMILY GIVES DICK THE GLADYS EYE. _Richard Trotter_ Mr. CHARLES HAWTREY. _Emily Delmar_ Miss GLADYS COOPER.] In the Third Act, though we never recover the rapture of the First, the humour touches a higher level; but what it gains in _finesse_ it loses in spontaneity. Here we meet _Emily's_ father, returned from lecturing in the States on social ethics. The scandal of his daughter's conduct leaves him indifferent, for a long and varied experience of the morals of many lands, in the course of which he has married as many as eighteen wives, having made a point of adopting for the time being the system--polygamous or other--of the country in which he happens to find himself, has taught him that nothing is right or wrong except as local opinion makes it so. We are allowed to gather that heredity may have had some influence in the moulding of _Emily's_ character; and if we may hope for its continuance into the next generation there seems every prospect that the children she may bear to _Trotter_ (now released from _Julia_ and free to marry the right woman) will not have their development hampered by excess of prudery.