Purser E. Warsoy. Waiter " Avprey Jonzs. Tommy: y, PerctvaL KNicut, Mrs, Bangs......... Miss Gracr Drswon. Lady Punchestown Bertua Hunter. Nora O'Neill Exyestive Warren.
Eva Boxneur.
Eva Cantorra.
"The Messenger Boy" was produced on Saturday at the Lyceum by this engaging company before a house crowded in every part, a house that showed its undoubted enjoyment by constant laughter and applause and unstinted encores. "The Messenger Boy" called for the whole strength of the company; and when they were all on the scone together, the spectator could realise what a complete and, as we have said, engaging company itis. The story of the comedy is simple and straightforward in the extreme. Mr. Tudor Pyke, the villain (Mr. F. Pengelly), who' declares himself at once to be a comedy villain by the extreme fashionableness of his dre: his size, his sonorousness, and the care with which his silk hat is brushed, has fixed his prejudicial affections on Nora O'Neill (Miss E. Walter), who is in love with and is loved by a virtuous young King's Messenger, Clive Radnor (Mr. P. Haydn), whose ingenuous appearance stamps him at once as the victim of the wily Pyke. Clive is under orders to take a dispatch from the F. 0. with all speed to Lord Punchestown, Nora's father, who is somewhere up the Nile, and he therefore spends a good deal' of time in the hall of the Hotel cil, London, where the opening scene is laid. In a moment of youthful folly Clive has backed a Dill for a friend for £1,500 which has grown by renewals into £5,800; this bill has been bought up by Pyke, who sees that his only chance of thwarting Clive's suit is to send this bill by the hand of a Messenger Boy to the interior of Egypt, and the boy must get there before Clive does. Lady Punchest own (Miss B. Hunter), who is much too nice and jolly to have really committed such a folly, has run up an enormous bill with' her milliner, who is really Pyke, which she can't pay; and by waving this incriminating bill in her face, the villainous Pyke persuades her to assist him in his design to effect a matrimonial alliance with Nora, who abominates him. By mistake, however, Pyke sends the milliner's bill instead of Clive's bill to Lord Punchestown, but as nothing comes of this trifling mistake, it need not be pursued.
Cecil 3s Cosmos Bey (Mr. F. Cochrane), Also pervading the hall of the Hotel when we recognise ut once as being connected with Egypt because he wears a sergeant's red sash over his grey suit of dittos and atarbush. He is the agent of Hooker Pasha (Mr. D.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.