San Francisco dramatic review (1899)

14 For in his ravings by mistake, A solemn truth the madman spake. Is it not time for some one ty arise in our midst and carpenter a farce with other than a French hammer ? Let him see to it that it is not beamed with suggestion and plastered with thinly veiled indecency. Though many a tough old farce Jacobite will yield up these traditions grudgingly, it may be stated, without fear of immediate contradiction, that there are other ways of being funny. A close observer might find much that is frivilous and ridiculous at his very door, and these truths exaggerated in the telling might become so interestingly farcical. * And now we have a new prestidigitator who promises much. At least, I suppose he is new — Prof. J. Warren Keane — because I never heard of him before. And he is right welcome. We must have our magicians. They are the only beautiful consistent humbugs we have left who never try to pose as anything else. I hope this young man will practice living on air and acid, get and keep thin and look in league with Satan and his whole court of imps. That is where Herman scored. One always felt like standing on the edge of a prudent crowd to watch his tricks. If Prof. Keane pushes and polishes his talents and looks to his opportunities, he may one day be something authoritative in his chosen profession Miss Grace Field is another young woman I want the privilege of hailing. I have noticed her often on the Tivoli stage and wondered what her plans were and hoped she would realize them. Early in the week I heard her speak some lines. In a small and very bad part, with two wooden please-excuse-me-I-havesome-stockings-to-darn exits, she was a refreshing piece of quiet, though plainly nervous naturalness and bow she managed it, is still a conundrum. Mark me, she will be heard from and soon. * * * These exits — why are they not better looked to in the writing of plays? With what a terrible loss of dignity and balance do most people hie them to the wings. . Always an excuse for going and the conversation halts until the thing is accomplished, and the baldness of it is thus fourfold magnified. To enter is difficult enough, but it is not a circumstance to getting off again. Why not have trap doors and drop them through or vanish them by a cabinet trick ? How often does one criticise an actress for her exits, thoughtless of the cruel and inartistic demand the play is making upon her. vShe should be commisserated rather than criticised. If I were in her place I would refuse to go. I should dropdown like a tired dog on the door rug and get swept out with the next petticoats that passed. Art, industry and time, the three most pawerful agents of progress, are producing so much that is forceful and admirable in the dramatic world (it does not come our way, but we read of it) that the paucity of new comicopera is the more apparent. Half the world is early put to the piano. The folly, the stupidity of it. Four, five, six hours a day are put in on a hard stool and musicians are produced. But alas, most of them are only musicians — genius or whatever you may choose to call the result has been cultivated at the expense of a general education, and narrow mindedness, sometimes to the verge of mental warp is the result. These musicians, main of them know no more of the great world about them than a lot of house flies, and yet they go to writing comic opera. It is almost a joke. The librettist is supposed to supply material for inspiration, but how is one to write tuneful, beautiful music for what he is not in sympathy with ? Comic opera touches a large community with its influences and should not l>e beneath the ambitions of those who can handle a theme with classic correctness. When the comic is there the opera is not, and vice versa. No one who has not had the experience of life with a broad horizon can write comedy of any sort, and what we are pleased often to call comic opera has nothing in common with its name. There must be broad minded, forceful musicians somewhere who could if they would. Then why do they not ? Side Lights Upon The Well Beloved. THE VAUDEVILLE TEAM. Mary has a little plan, To star in vaudeville. It's such an easy way to pay The bread and butcher bill. She learns a little song and dance, She says she is inspired. This may be true, But when she's through, The town is rather tired. John he has a little plan To rest in vaudeville. To work is dull — he'd rather take A bitter quinine pill. He paints his face and sings, "Sweethearts," He thinks he'll make a hit. Hut will he though ? O. I don't know, The gallery says "Nit!" John and Mary form a plan To join in vaudeville ; Now John he has a rusty bass, And Mary's voice is shrill. The team is matched but cannot draw, Could anything be odder. It wants the earth, Hut is not worth A meagre dish of fodder. Miss Kieth Wakeman Interviewed HER NEW PLAY Miss Wakeman extends a cordial hand. Not the kind that betokens "rude health, a warm heart and a distance from the metropolis" — a manner, suggestive of the thoroughly cultured English gentlewoman goes with it, and indicates a long acquaintance with good form and social usage. We began with the usual monotonous double line of courtesy, exchanging conventional nothings, like the preliminary motions exacted by etiquette in the fashionable school of fence — and for at least two minutes there was no advantage. Then I chose another chair, not to utilize space, but the better to look her over in the interviewer's usual brutal way, and fell to tracing her descent. I found her like a composite of Faith and Hope in Hicks' Three Graces, and decided that whatever charm of feature she might owe to ancestry, the soul, the real power of the face, was hers by right of discovery and culti vation. And I saw that in spite of a certain regard for the leveling styles of the day she had yet a pretty talent for originality in gown, rather gone out of late. And we talked slackly the while, she getting time to think and I to provision my tongue with the usual commonplace questions. I made a remark about Nance O'Neil and knew by a flicker of the eyelid that something she held made my remark ridiculous. I wanted to laugh, but instead I asked with my most professional dull-thud-of-the-pencil air: "Why did you go on the stage?" (as though it were anvof my business.) "Disease. Couldn't help it. " I caviled at the choice of the word disease, and she mentally tagged me the bore who needs things explained. "And you like best to play ?" "Very brilliant comedy or very serious drama— classic tragedy best of all!" And I knew she believed me capable of appreciating something about as heavy as a Christmas panto mime. Now I was dying to laugh. Not to laugh in some fashion was an impossibility and so I wrote: "Wounded but able to crawl," and looked up with a smile of conscious innocence. And if the whole situation up to this was not a beautiful one for a comedv, I'll eat a fried chop. Ignorantly I stumbled upon the right answer and whatever it was, Allah be praised, for suddenly a mind whose druss has been cleared away and that is not given to being too generous of what it holds, began to think aloud, and— dame, but to talk to her was happiness! Even when she frivoled, to use a word of hers, there seemed a power back of it, as even the bubbles are connected with the infinite ocean. She chooses her words simply and quickly, in the unembarrassed way that comes with experience. She has the philosopher's habit and finds work a sort of tonic. Her comments on life and things are wise and true and so piquant. For this you must take my word for her clever asides are not relevant to the chief theme of this little story. Booth is her idol. I noticed his picture on her table and it stood alone. I soon felt that his death has