Ibsen's "Master Builder."

The third of Mr. John Blair's modern plays, Henrik Ibsen's "Master Builder," was given yesterday at the Tremont Theatre.

The plot consists of four main incidents--the arrival of Hilda Wangel, the approval of the builder's plans, the death of Knut Brovik, and the fall of Solness. It is incoherent and is, throughout, illogical, almost trivial. The crack in the wall, designedly neglected to cause the death of two children and destroy the happiness of half a dozen people, seems too small a peg on which to hang such tragic events. The abrupt and meaningless transition, in the scene between Hilda and Solness in the first act, from church steeples to the kingdom of youth, and back again, is worthy of the veriest tyro. But in the expression of subtle thoughts and emotions and in shades of feeling so delicate we cannot define them in ourselves, the play is indeed the work of a master builder. Swinburne's poetry represents that transitionary stage between articulate ideas and music; where the mere sound of the words carries more weight than their definite meaning. Ibsen's play stands at the other end of the scale, where the subtlety of idea and emotion has passed beyond the range of verbal expression.

The absence of Mr. Blair from the cast was deeply felt. Mr. Pascoe as Solness, however, brought out vividly the conflicting elements of Solness's almost insanely morbid character. Miss Kahn, as Hilda Wangel, was the star of the performance; the mere fact of her having given to Ibsen's impossible heroine so much life and so much reality, is in itself the highest tribute to her acting. Mr. Lewis, as Ragnar Brovik, seemed much more at home than in "Ties," and played his part with greater ease and more convincingness. But the theories of the so-called "natural" school of acting have so far influenced the cast, with the possible exception of Miss Kahn, that there was a certain stiffness, unpleasant in the extreme.