San Francisco dramatic review (1899)

THE SAN FRANCISCO DRAMATIC REVIEW August i, 1908. a part which is lifeless and dull at rehearsal comes suddenly forward at the performance like sympathetic ink on a page held toward the fire. In this instance they did not know whether to attribute the unlooked-for emphasis to an unusual attention in the audience, some informing' intelligence between itself and the actress, or merely to the fact that Lydia was somehow lighted up. What had got into her tonight? Mow was it that she seemed to be a little different, to be — as it were — coming out? What was the suggestion in her personality, as of something rich and strange, to which they listened as to a new voice? They had always been fond of her, they had always even admired her, but they had never considered her exciting. Was there, then, something more in Lydia than they had ever suspected? Or had they, now they came to think of it, suspected it all along, though only tonight had the suspicion found voice? In any case, the rumor grew; it sped from lip to lip, from whisper to exclamation, growing by what it fed on till it was the chief gossip, the chief outcry, of the dressing-rooms: "Well, just the same, I tell you it's Lydia Harland's making the hit tonight!" The report came to Liza and to Elfrida Watts and made them at once afraid and glad — they who had lamented Lydia's passiveness and wished that Frankie Carzon, if no one better, would rouse her spirit: it came to Frank himself, who had mourned her need of help and his inability to help her — she who now seemed moving in triumph far away — oh, far beyond the help or hope or thought of little boys ! Thus it came about that as Lydia went here and there, as she joined groups in the entrances or selected hospital supplies in the property-room, she was aware of something tender and especial in people's manner, a little note of wonder and esteem in long familiar voices, congratulatory pressures in the touch of friendly hands, smiling whispers, kindling glances, all the little fluttered rustle of a fond court admitting eagerly her precedence. And Lydia's nature rushed out to all this cordial clamor in that insistent need of love which was as strong as life in her; her blood seemed to flow in her more naturally than for many a day, her heart opened and her spirit lifted. She was happy. Not only for herself; she perceived the evening to be going greatly, Fosburg to be conducting it to victory, and her attention was filled by that. She luxuriated once more in the sense of his power and mastery, of his exceeding worth, so large did he loom on that portentious night, so completely was he once again the great man which she had seen him when she was a girl ! She rejoiced to be a trusted part of that machine which was to reorganize his life, to be an officer in the army with which he was winning his kingdom. The attitude of the audience, of the company, Chesney's recognition of her, had welcomed her to a place in these resplendent issues ; the past and the future were equally forgotten, and the high-hearted present reigned alone. It was as if a comforting world had taken her by the hand, as if life, after strange, unworthy doubts on her part, had stooped to vindicate itself. Oh, it was good to be happy again ! The third act was called. The third act was the great act; it contained the big scenic effect, the great climax for Fosburg's acting. It was in two scenes. The first set was a field hospital. Lydia's best chance came in this scene,and it went so surprisingly that under other circumstances she would have had to take a scene-call. Even the dark change descending like a damper on the house could hardly put out the applause until some faint moonlight dawned again and revealed the walls of the hero's prison. The crisis of the play had come. Young Mr. Lowney had seized upon the account of Lieutenant Hobson's watching of the battle of San Juan from Morro Castle and had planted his hero in Hobson's place. The stage was well and grimly set with a barred window to the stage-right and a dreadful expanse of stone wall everywhere else. Here the incarcerated hero was certainly in a bad plight ; he was starved, insulted, and generally tormented by the Spaniards, and, besides all this, he was ill with "the fever," from the pathetic wanderings of which he suffered occasional lapses into heroic repartee. Then came the time when he was alone, and the delirium became very bad indeed, and he could bear no more and fainted, and night came on, and at last, when the stage was good and dark, the spirit of his betrothed appeared to him. She appeared to him through the trap in a strong calcium ind dressed in a chiffon mist, that legendary garb of visions, and she told the hero a great many things about the conduct and future of the war which it was really very clever of her to know. This was the scene which Lydia had idvised against from the beginning ; she had particularly deprecated the use of a :rap instead of a transparency, more particularly still the use of a special trap which Fosburg had had cut for an exceptional occasion a long time ago. It ay only a little to the left centre — to the player's left, that is to say — and no farther back than the first entrance. As there was no apron to the stage, it seemed to Lydia in the very lap of the audience. "There won't be any illusion, Tom," she had argued. But Mr. Fosburg had said that a premature trans>arency would spoil the big effect at the end of the act, and that he wanted her n front of him anyhow, so that the audience could see his face, and so she had 0 be far front, for he was not going to stand up back and have people craning their necks off to see his facial expression. So that was settled. The vision came and said her say as unobtrusively as possible ; her patriotic prophecies, however, persisted in bringing forth ill-considered rounds of applause, so that the apparition, anxious, after the uneasy fashion of apparitions, to get away, scurried a little in her lines and sank out of sight with somewhat apologetic swiftness — this was not her scene. Before the crown of her head had well disappeared, the hero had seized the situation again with an attractive groan and then relapsed into his faint. And dawn came, and sunrise, and full clay, all in a few moments, with the newest electrical and mechanical effects, with the song of birds and the beginnings of battle, and with the stage-manager almost insane from his chronic combination of responsibility and incompetence. Poor Fosburg, prone and helpless on the stage, began to breathe more easily as the changes followed each other in due form. He had had a moment of almost regretting that he had dispensed with Frank Carzon's services tonight. Little Wiley, that poor stage-manager, was used to leaning so heavily upon Lydia's assistance, and Lydia on Frank's ; the stage-hands were used to them, they liked Liddy. they liked the boy. What if Mr. Fosburg's orders had been premature? He might have let things go as they were for one last performance. But his misgivings were not justified, all went smoothly, and at last, the sun getting in his eyes, the hero woke and sprang over to the window and saw the battle, and in the great speech of the play, while he shook the bars to accompanying crashes from outside, obligingly described it to the audience. Every incident of the Spanish war happened then and there, right in front of that barred window, to be described ; every telling remark of every participator, spectator, or newspaper was put into the hero's mouth to describe it with. The whole gamut of emotions was run up to the triumphant climax when the imprisoned patriot broke into a frenzy of sobbing joy. This was Fosburg's opportunity, and he rose to it like a man and an artist. Now or never was his chance to show Chesney that all the acting had not been seen on Broadway ; that, whatever people might say, the great race of the old tragedians had not perished from the earth. The material was of the sort which Fosburg could handle superbly, almost perfectly. Of original fervor, of that spiritual vitality commonly called inspiration, he knew nothing, but he had lungs, grace, earnestness, pictorial intelligence, a disciplined mechanism, a magnificent command of his resources ; he was well up in pause and pose ami pitch, learned in variety and emphasis, past master in "repressed force" and "rising power" and all the thrilling tricks of emphasis; whatever else he knew or did not know, he knew his business. To people not keen about essentials, he was unsurpassable ; to people like Chesney, weary of temperamental fakes and slipshod reliance upon personality, this conscientious, conventional, effective skill was rousingly, refreshingly worth-while. So that in the tide of mad applause that swept over the house no one joined more heartily than the connoisseur, glad to let himself go with the populace, glad to be of one cordial spirit with a real occasion. Success was not only here, it was established ; Fosburg's fortune was made. Yet events proceeded. The house, still under Fosburg's control, began to hush itself a little, seeing him stagger to his feet ; he turned his back on it, stretching out his arms, crying in an ecstatic invocation of love and longing to "the boys outside," and at the word the prison walls were turned to air ; straight across the rear of the stage, right up to the proscenium, they melted away; and there, with only the mesh of the transparency intervening, stretched the hillside of San Juan. It was certainly an achievement of realistic setting, for the slope was high and solid ; the supers carefully posed, carefully trained. Fosburg had followed Mr. Remington's picture as closely as his nature would allow, permitting himself only a few little added gallantries of grouping, of flags and music, only a few extra touches of scenic pathos. There, sure enough, was the weary hill, the blinding sun — almost one felt the quiver of the heat ; there was the rain of shot, the toiling rush, the broken lines of figures swarming and stumbling, and there on horseback was the Rough Rider from whose hat a polka-dotted handkerchief streamed in the electric breeze. Perhaps to the highly sophisticated, the thing was rather funny, but yet it was achieved to a miracle — and worked one. The audience sprang to its feet, the orchestra burst into "The Star Spangled Banner," the curtain came down and went up, came down and went up, and enthusiasm ran riot. There were six calls on the tableau, and then a call that shook the house for Fosburg. He took it, bowing profoundly, honestly moved, his heart in his throat. He took another and another and another, then he had on the whole company, then he and the super who had impersonated that particular Rough Rider took one together and the house almost beat its breast with fondness, then he took one alone again with all the flowers he had received set on the stage, then he took one without the flowers. In the wings and entrances the company crowded and pushed and peered, whispering, laughing, jostling, wild with success and eager to see Fosburg's triumph. Young Mr. Erskine held Earlie Esterbrook on his shoulder, Minnie Fusclle burrowed between Robbins and Brownrics', snuffling with joy. "Where's Wiley?" said Frank Carzon.