very violent attack of fiery old colonels; at another, it was plausible scoundrels; at another, Members of Parliament." Playwright; Australasia Maltby combined his membership of Wyndham's Criterion company with his continuing career as a writer and designer. He provided a libretto for Hervé's music for the Alhambra Theatre's 1880 Christmas piece, Mefistofele II, and co-wrote and appeared in La Belle Normande, an opéra bouffe adapted from Léon Vasseur's La Famille Trouillat. He was co-author of The Three Hats (1883), an adaptation of Hennequin's Les Trois chapeaux, and author of Old Flames (1884), an English version of 115 Rue Pigalle by Alexandre Bisson. Another well-received piece was his farce Borrowed Plumes (Adelphi Theatre, 1885). When Wyndham revived the 18th-century comedy Wild Oats in 1886 Maltby played Lamp, the oily theatrical manager. A Criterion colleague, the actor Harry Saint Maur, described Maltby as an instinctive actor, getting straight to the essence of a character without painstaking analysis, and commented: "But then, he, Selina Dolaro, and a few other people of a like calibre I have met with are geniuses". Later in 1886 Wyndham sent a company to Australia and New Zealand. Maltby was known to playgoers there as the author of The Three Hats, which proved popular with audiences in both countries, and he was well received as a performer. During his stay, in addition to playing several of his regular parts, he designed costumes for, and co-wrote, the Theatre Royal, Melbourne's Christmas pantomime, played his first non-comic role, Captain Redwood in Jim the Penman, and directed several plays. Later years Throughout the late 1880s and 1990s Maltby continued his tripartite career as actor, writer and designer. In addition to plays, his writing included regular contributions to Judy and Fun. Having made his name as an actor in the plays of the "father of French farce", Alfred Hennequin, he starred in 1896 in one of the first farces of Hennequin's successor Georges Feydeau to be given in London. Maltby appeared with Fred Terry, Weedon Grossmith and Ellis Jeffreys in His Little Dodge (1896), an adaptation of Le Système Ribadier by Feydeau and Hennequin's son Maurice. The Era described Maltby and the play as "making a big hit". Maltby's last play, in which he made his final stage appearance, was the farce My Soldier Boy, co-written with Frank Lindo, given at the Criterion in 1899. Maltby's co-stars were Grossmith and Jeffreys. The Morning