San Francisco dramatic review (1899)

i6 THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC REVIEW January i, 1910 THE SUCCESS OF SUCCESSES SILVER THREADS By MARTIN V. MERLE. Staged by WM. ROBERT DALY. STARRING Richard J. Jose Wttff NOW PLAYING NEW ENGLAND Address: Broadway and 39th Street, New York. F. S. CUTLER. Manager. TURNING THEM AWAY THE E wd. Armstrong' Musical Comedy Co. Now Playing to Capacity Business. Grand, Vancouver. The Best Musical Comedy Company on the Pacific Coast. WHY? Because We Have the Best Shows. Because We Have the Best Comedians. Some Class to This Bunch WILL ARMSTRONG. ED W. ARMSTRONG, GUS LEONARD, GEO. HOWARD, MISS ETHEL DAVIS, MISS CLARA HOWARD, MISS DOROTHY LEE And a Chorus of Ten Baby Dolls We Played Pickwick, San Diego, 20 Weeks. We Play Here 35 Weeks. CALIFORNIA MANAGERS: Write us for time after January. 1910. EDW. ARMSTRONG, Manager. The Coast Must Be Tired of Bum Musical Shows Here's AS THE SUN Address ARTHUR C. AISTON a WENT DOWN Sole Owner Real Drama By Geo. D. Baker With ESTHA WILLIAMS Room 304 1505 Broadway N.Y. City Tel. 041 Bryant Novel Plans for Empire Theatre Season With the announcement of the final plans for the present Empire Theatre season, Charles Frohman evidently has an eye on the boat that will take him to London and to conquests new. The final stroke in Mr. Frohman's present American season will be a series of special productions acted at his New York Empire Theatre by a company organized solely for this purpose. There will be no star at the head .of this company. Certain plays in which Mr. Frohman is interested, because he believes they possess certain values, will be given on their own accounts, in a way that is hoped will combine the advantages of the stock company system and the star system. The first of such productions will be a comedy performance at The Empire Theatre on Monday, March 28th. The first of Mr. Frohman's announcements is that Maude Adams' season at The Empire Theatre in What Every Woman Knows will end on Saturday. January 15th. On the following Monday Sir Charles Wyndham and Mary Moore, who arrived from England December 24th on the Lusitania, will give the first of sixteen performances of The Mollusc. This engagement will constitute Sir Charles Wyndham's farewell appearance on the New York stage. The distinguished actor, famous as one of the most charming personalities on the present English speaking stage, as well as for a long line of acting achievements, conspicuously an incomparable David Garrick. will pass his seventythird birthday in America next March. The Empire Theatre season of Sir Charles and Mary Moore in The Mollusc will end on Saturday, January 29th, after which the actor will set out on a farewell tour on the American stage. Monday, January 31st, New York will have its first glimpse of Ethel Barrymore in Pinero's MidChannel, where she takes the role of Zoe Blundcll. Now for the New Tivoli W. H. Leahy, who with Mrs. Ernestine Kreling conducted the famous Tivoli for over 25 years, will leave for Italy next month to organize a grand opera company, which is to appear at the new Tivoli Theatre in this city in 191 1. The new Tivoli is to be opened on the site of the present Hall of Justice and on the same ground where the first Tivoli stood. Arrangements have already been made abroad for the acquirement of several notable singers who are to take part in the grand opera season in this city. In speaking of his plans Mr. Leahy said: *T shall leave in the early part of next month to sign up with numerous good singers whom we hope to have out here in 191 1 during the grand opera season. The new Tivoli, it is expected, will be opened here in 191 1, and it is solely for the purpose of closing the deal with these singers that I am going abroad." The Orpheum The immense success achieved by the dainty little singing comedienne. Alice Lloyd is almost without parallel in the history of this city's vaudeville, and the announcement that her engagement cannot be prolonged beyond next week will be received with general regret. The program for the coming week while retaining Miss Lloyd for its chief feature, will nevertheless contain a number of novel acts that are sure to reach across the footlights. Franklyn Underwood and Frances Slosson will present the diverting comedietta, Dobbs' Dilemma : The Basque Grand Opera Quartette, French vocalists, who dress in Alpine costume and render with splendid effect numbers from II Trovatore, Martha, Frou Frou D'Amour and other favorite operas ; Belle Davis, who was the first to introduce the catchy ditty, "He Certainly Was Good to Me," and her colored pickaninnies, and Fox and Foxie's Circus, which introduces beside Fox, a capital comedian, trained dogs, cats and Foxie, the smallest horse in the world, will be the new acts that are sure to hit the popular taste. The marvelous Klein Family, German comedy cyclists, whose engagement was interrupted by the Orpheum Road Show, will return for next week only, which will be the last of those funny clowns, the Permane Brothers, and also the famous English eccentrics. The McNaughtons. The motion pictures, which will conclude the performance, will be well worth while. Savoy Theatre Ezra Kendall and his clever company of players will make their last appearances here in The Vinegar Buyer, this Saturday afternoon and evening. Commencing with a special matinee Sunday, with the usual matinees on Thursday and Saturday, the new Alaskan, fresh from the triumph of a five months' run in Chicago, will begin an engagement limited to one week. This is one of the remodeled enterprises which has been found to take in the things which theatregoers seek : good fun in abundance, music which ranges from the romantic to the lively and smart stage management. Since The Alaskan was presented in San Francisco it lias passed into the hands of Richard F. Carroll and Gus Weinburg, eminent comic opera comedians, who were commissioned to freshen the book, swell the comedy parts and give the show more "speed." They had to reckon with' a musical score which is ornamented with several really fine numbers, all of which were saved, and they wrote several new specialties which went a long ways to giving The Alaskan a flying start in Chicago. Richard Carroll, well remembered as a comedian here during the' palmy days of Fischer's Theatre, plays a theatrical manager with a troupe on his hands, and Mr. Weinburg portrays a German naturalist in charge of a wealthy niece, on an exploration tour of Alaska. The other essential characters are assumed by Detmar Poppen, who plays Totem Pole Pete ; John R. Phillips, the hero of the story, Atwater; Jessie Stoner, the heroine, who has "grub-staked" the pals, Atwater and Totem ; Kuko, an Eskimo girl, destined to surrender to the wiles of the theatrical manager and played by Etta Lockheart, and John Rose, who impersonates a polar bear. The Wolf, Eugene Walter's remarkably strong play of life in the Canadian wilderness, will follow The Alaskan at tb,e Savoy Theatre. '. • . • •' ::' ! Alcazar Theatre St. Elmo, the reigning dramatic sensation in the East, will be given its first presentation here next Monday evening and throughout the week in the Alcazar. It was adapted by Willard Holcomb from Augusta J. Evans-Wilson's famous story similarly titled, and is the only version authorized by the gifted novelist. Frederick Belasco was fortunate in securing the exclusive right to produce it in San Francisco before it will be brought here by a road company. For the enlightenment of those who have not read St. Elmo, it may be stated that the play preserves so far as possible within dramatic limits of time and space the main incidents and atmosphere of the original romance. The period is about sixty years ago, and according to the story, Edna Earl, granddaughter of a blacksmith of Chattanooga, is the unintended witness of a duel in which St. Elmo Murray, a young aristocrat of Georgia, kills Murray Hammond. St. Elmo had ample justification for seeking satisfaction under the then prevailing "code of honor," but when in after years, accident and ambition combine to make Miss Earl the protege of his mother and the pet pupil of the Rev. Hammond, she regards the young man with fear and aversion, based upon her belief that he is a murderer whose wealth and social positiqri. /enabled him to escape just punishment. For three acts thereafter it is a duel between St. Elmo, aristocrat, and Edna Earl, plebeian — a contest which is complicated by their, mutual love, which eventually overrides pride and difference in rank, and brings the narrative to a happpy, if unexpected conclusion. While abounding in spontanous comedy, the play rises to heights of dramatic intensity unsurpassed by any stage offering since The Christian was first launched. The third act climax ascends to a pitch of almost spiritual emotion in which mere physical love is subordinated to the higher moral law. All the scenes are laid in the South before the Civil war, which gives opportunity for a picturesque scenic investiture and quaintly effective costuming. In the cast will be the cream of the Alcazar company, with Evelyn Vaughan as Edna and John Ince as St. Elmo. Max Steixle and Mattie Hyde are spending the holidays with relatives in Oakland. Mr. and Mrs. Steinle have been in Arizona the past year with the American Musical Comedy Company, managed by Sam Dunlop, playing Bisbee, Globe and El Paso, where the company is exceedingly popular. They will return for another season next Monday. Other well known people in the company are Majorie Dalton and Charles Reilly, leads ; Frank Flayne. Ben Sellars. pevona May and Pudge Earl. Mr. Steinle will act as director this season.