San Francisco dramatic review (1899)

Jan uar}r 8, 1910 THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC REVIEW 13 Correspondence NEW YORK. Jan. 2.— Sprightly Elsie Janis brought The Fair CoEd, the lively musical piece by George Ade and Gustav Luders, to the Grand Opera House last Monday, where a big audience gave the young star an encouraging send-off on her week's engagement. The play is good of its kind, full of brisk action and pretty songs and diverting without resort to clowning or vulgarity. The supporting company is large and as capable as when it was seen on Broadway. * * * To say that The City, acted at the Lyric Theatre last Monday for the first time, is the most important play that Clyde Fitch ever wrote is not to so bevond the mark ; to sav that it contains the strongest scene m any of his plays, a scene, indeed, which for sheer power, intensity, and cumulative effect has seldom been excelled, is well within the facts. The City is a play, too, which the playwright might well have been glad to leave behind him as his valedictory. More than any play of Mr. Fitch's that can be recalled it is free from those artificialities which the playwright so often introduced merely for their momentary effect. It is, in fact, a logical and convincing structure on the foundation of a good idea, and from first to last it moves consistently and directly to its point. It is not often in the theatre that an audience is moved as it was moved last night by the developing power of this play's second act, with a scene culminating in a terrific tragedy, in which far more than the life of an innocent victim goes down in the resounding crash. But the scene, though probably as blood-curdling as anything that ever thrilled at Antoine's or the Grand Guignol, had the additional merit of developing steadily and naturally out of the conflict of character and incidents that had gone before. The action for the most part was fine and moving. Mr. Tully Marshall, in his portrait of the opium-crazed brother eclipsing even his own splendid performance of the weak-kneed husband in Paid in Full. It was acting of a kind that demands imagination, power and intensity, all of which Mr. Marshall brought to bear, creating a complete illusion and sustaining it superbly to the bitter cringing, terrifying end. Mr. A. H. Stuart's performance of the father could not be excelled, and Eva Vincent, notably in the last act, played with beautiful genuineness of feeling. Mary Nash, too, as the innocent young victim, and passing from lighter phases to moments of great feeling, acted with restraint, variety and depth. Lucille Watson also contributed materially to the value of the scenes which engaged her, while George Howell was natural and easy in a role that might have been overplayed. Helen Holmes filled the simple requirements. Nothing finer was shown, however, than Edward Emery's delicately nuanced role of the philandering husband, turned for a time from his evil by the general shock, and expressing in a moment of exquisitely delivered tenderness the effects of the sudden disclosure. * * * Histoire d' tin Pierrot, a pantomime in three acts and twenty scenes was the novelty offered at the New Theatre by the Metropolitan Opera Com pany last week. It is the work of Marie Costa and has enjoyed peculiar favor in Italy, Spain, France. South America and London. The pantomime runs for one hour and forty minutes, during all of which time the action is incessant. Lodovico Saracco, the Italian ballet master at the Metropolitan Opera House, has played the role of Pochinet in this pantomime more than 70O times. He played the same role here, while Rita Sachette played the part of Pierrot. The Histoire d' un Pierrot was given with Cavalleria Rusticana. * * * In The Commanding Officer Theodore Burt Sayre has written a military melodrama of more than usual strength, and Daniel Frohman, in equipping the piece with a capable and efficient cast and excellent stage accessories, gave it last night a most satisfactory production at the Savoy Theatre. The story is not new to melodramas of army life, but the admirable presentation of the main points and the acting of the principal members of the company were so good that the interest gripped from the first and held to the fall of the last curtain. Its features are the intensity of passion of men of the Western fort, the effect of the narrow gossip of envious women, the misunderstanding of conditions by young and fascinating women thrown suddenly into the whirl of its life and the self-sacrificing devotion of the garrison to the commanding officer. Isabel Irving, by her excellent acting of Floyd Carroll, gave the role a prominence that the author perhaps had not intended at first. She played with such evident sincerity the part of one who was determined to help her friend and at the same time gain the affection of the man whom she loved that she held at all times the sympathies of her audience. Her lightness in the -ordinary flirtations with the garrison officers was made to strongly contrast with her earnestness of purpose when she saw the happiness of one person and the life of another in peril. The role of the villain, Lieut. Waring, fell to Robert Haines, and while he did not succeed in gaining any sympathy for the man he made him as forcible as such a shifty individual could be drawn. His .examination before Col. Archer and his changes from one position to another as his defenses were overthrown was an excellent piece of acting. He was forced to leave the service and go out of the country at the insistence of his brother officers and to save the family of the commanding officer, but he did it with a certain bravado that was not without its charm. Gertrude Dallas had a difficult role in that of Belle Archer. She was compelled to lay out most of the plot, but at the same time could only appear at the beginning and the end and leave the working out for others, Charles Millward played with dignity the part of Col. Archer. The requirements were not great, but in two or three scenes he played with so much force that the story was greatly benefited. Frederick Watson and George Riddell gave good characterizations of elder members of the garrison and staff. Edward Martindel had but little to do as Lieut. Hammond, but he made a good appearing officer. George Staley made a good Western sheriff of the traditional type, and John Junior managed to make the role of Lieut. Billings mildly amusing. Mrs. Bingham, the garrison gossip, and Gwendolen Bingham, the young woman who wanted to get married, were acceptably done by Rose Rand and Phyllis Sherwood respectively. * * * A lot of children, some of whom came from east of Third avenue, saw Cinderella on the stage yesterday afternoon at Carnegie Lyceum. Cinderella, in the person of Isabel Daintry, matched up with her own slipper in the traditional way and promptly fled off with Prince Charming. George K. Fortescue did the ugly sister act, six feet high and thick in proportion. Jeanette Lowrie was Prince Charming. John W. Sherman's dissolving tableau acts preceded the play. The youngsters sat on the edges of their chairs and took in everything that happened. A little boy, one of a string of four belonging to one mother, knew more about the ways of moving picture shows than he did of the doings of real stages. "Ma," said he when Cinderella had patched things up with the Prince, "do you have to go out when the show is over?" * * * There were moments last night at the Criterion Theatre — where Charles Frohman gave the first New York presentation of The Bachelor's Baby, with Francis Wilson as the star and playwright — when the audience said wonderingly, "We've got a new star." They were thinking of the kiddie in the yellow ringlets and ostentatious lingerie and bare legs who is down on the program merely as Baby Davis. Little Miss Davis plays, of course, the Baby of the little comedy which Mr. Wilson wrote some time ago in the form of a novel hut before it was published decided to turn into a play. The Bachelor's Baby tells the story of a Xew York bachelor who is a child hater and who is appointed, acording to his brother's will, the guardian of the dead brother's little daughter. The youngster wins the heart of her youthful bachelor uncle, and there you have the whole story from beginning to end. Although not the most original idea in the world. Air. Wilson, as he first begins to grapple with his slight story, takes in his grip an excellent idea for a play. The comedy was typical of Francis Wilson. There is no change in the set throughout the three acts — if we except Mr. Wilson's changes of well fitting clothes. A number of other characters came and went while the baby was winning the bachelor. They did their work well, especially Helen Strickland, a person in the bachelor's household, whose relationship to the rest of the family was not explained. Clarence Handyside, Edna Bruns and Lillian Lawrence are among the suporting company. * * * Oscar Hammerstsein has announced that the first production in America of Richard Strauss's latest music drama, Elektra, will be given at the Manhattan Opera House on Tuesday evening, January 25. It will be a special performance and double prices will be charged, seats ranging on this occasion from $10 to $2.50. * * * Arnold Daly returned to the Berkeley Theatre last week with a new "know thyself" play, again under his own management, and again the faithful who always attend the first performance of whatever Mr. Daly presents filled the lower part of the little house. All Kinds of SCENERY Painted, built and Installed. The only real Scenic Studio on the Coast. Get our prices. For Road or House productions. Front and Sheridan Sts. Portland. Oregon C. F. Weber & Co. Opera Chairs All Styles of THEATRE AND HALL SEATS 365-7 Market Street San Francisco 210-212 N. Main St. Los Angeles GOLDSTEIN & CO. COSTIMERS Goldstein's Hair and Wig Store, Make-Up. Play Books. Established 187«. Lincoln Building-, Market and Fifth Sts. A picturesque and faithful company. Here is a play in three acts and one scene taking place in a country house in France during the present period, as the program informs, in which six persons discuss earnestly, intensely, unchangingly one topic — marital infidelity. Men discuss it, women discuss it men and women, husbands and wives, wives and other husbands, lovers and rivals. The curtain descends twice only out of respect to the stage tradition in favor of splitting plays into acts and interrupts talk of marital infidelity, and the curtain rises to permit the discussion to go on precisely at the point it was interrupted.. The play was "excellently acted throughout. * . * * Charles Klein has hunted one octopus or another so successfully in his plays that to ask merely a good drama from his pen might seem exigent. He never allows tendency to interfere with his theatric skill, however, so there is less ground for demanding that he keep in mind the purpose of the playwright and not the theorist than there has been 'in the case of some recent American plays. The Next of Kin, produced last night at the Hudson Theatre, had its octopus in view and made its effort toward the reform of evils existing here in this year of grace. Put the new play was successful with the audience because of the absorbing melodramatic interest of one or two scenes. The audience enjoyed this climax so much that all the actors had to stand for a long time on the stage while the curtain went up and down. Then Mr. Klein had to make a speech. The popular success of The Next of Kin was assured from that moment. Hedwig Reicher was the persecuted heiress, and as she was Supposed to be of German descent, her slight accent proved of no artistic disadvantage Prank Sheridan tempered the villainy of the scheming lawyer with enough of his own naturalness to make the character plausible. Wallace Eddinger's performance as the helpful boy was another triumph. Grant Mitchell. Frederick Perry and Maggie Fielding were other figures that helped to give Mr. Klein's play every possible value that it contained. * * * Joseph Medill Patterson of Chicago jumped into notoriety about a year ago by writing a novel called A Little Brother of Continued on Pa«e 16.