* * * * * AT THE PLAY. "VICTORY." MR. MACDONALD HASTINGS has invented, and committed, yet another new sin--that of attempting to do a CONRAD novel into a three-act play. Fifteen, possibly; but three? We hardly think. What every Conradist knows is that you can't compress that master of subtlety without losing the master's dominant quality--atmosphere; that it's not so much the things he says but the queer way and the odd order in which he says them that matter. He is not precisely a filmable person. And yet, all things considered, the potter has produced a tolerable pot, and we may write down his fault of extreme foolhardiness as venial. What, however, Mr. CONRAD himself thought of the rehearsals, if he attended them--but perhaps we need not go into that. It is easy to see the attraction, for the players, of the series of star parts provided by the exciting story. You have first the eccentric, misjudged Swede, _Heyst_ (the adapter makes him an Englishman, perhaps wisely, as our stage takes no account of Swedes), come from self-banishment on a far Pacific island--a complex Conradian personality. Then his arch-enemy, _Schomberg_, lieutenant of reserve, shady hotel-keeper, sensualist and craven, with his insane malice. To these enter as pretty a company of miscreants as ever sailed the Southern seas: the sinister _Jones_, misogynist to the point of fine frenzy, nonconformist in the matter of card-playing, and thereafter frank bandit with a high ethic as to the superiority of plain robbery under arms over mere vulgar swindling--a gentleman with a code, in fact; his strictly incomparable "secretary," _Ricardo_ of the rolling eyes and gait and deathly treacherous knife, philogynist _sans phrase_; and _Pedro_, their groom, a reincarnated _Caliban_. It may also be noted that _Heyst_ has a freak servant, the disappearing _Wang_, whom the adapter uses, I suppose legitimately, as a kind of clown. And then, finally, there is a charming and unusual heroine, _Lena_, still in her teens, but of real flesh and blood, innocent and persecuted, daughter of a drunken fiddler (deceased), herself fiddling in a tenth-rate orchestra at _Schomberg's_ hotel, wherein it is not intended that the music shall be the chief attraction to the guests.