Those who went to see the A. D.
produce Barrie's What every Woman Knows" probably left the Lyceum Theatre last Friday very little the wiser on the subject, but appreciative of a pleasant _evening's entertainment. For Barrie really gives no information, save, perhaps, to enunciate the proposition that some women, like the Comtesse de la Briére, read others the same sex like a book, and that women know all there is to know about men, the clever ones of the former using that knowledge effectively in dealing with their male encumbrances, though one cynic was heard to remark that Barrie's real message to the world at large was that every woman knows how to "kid" her man along. But whatever may be the moral of the play there can be no gainsaying the fact that it is a delightful work with flashes of mischievous humour and some remarkable character drawing. Indeed it is because of the fact that every one of the characters is touched in by the writer with the simplest of lines that it is, probably, one of the most difficult for amateurs to perform. Particularly is this so_in the first and second acts in which there appears a remarkable hesitancy in progressing towards the climax of the third act, and ig because of what we might term this "'plain song" movement that the task of the amateurs who performed so well was more than a little difficult, When the activities of the A.D.C. since the reopening of the theatre come to be considered it is nothing short of remarkable that such a play could have been staged at all, and the wonder of the achievement is all the greater when it is realized that within a month there has been staged a comic era, a vaudeville: show and then this comedy with less than a week separating the last two. Of the production as a whole there is every reason to think that it completely justified the support given it in the booking by the theatrefoing public. It was eminently successful and by no means fell behind the standards set in similar productions of the past.
Turning to individual performers it is a little difficult to discriminate between the merits of the three
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.