Variety (Mar 1906)

VARIETY Shows of the Week ———■ By Chicot COLONIAL. Three new acts on the bill are to be found under that classification. Of the others the hit was the Hag girls of Frank D. In van, a number first serving in bur- lesque but which bears none of the ear- marks of that class of performance. The girls are trim in outline and quite the best formed lot seen in a girl act this season. The flag idea is novel but there is a de- <ided lack of invention iri"fHe"UgllW march- ing. The girls have been taught two marches, one for each song, and they re- peat these simple figures for each verse. The effect becomes tiresome. Bryan's own work is good. As a quick changer he shows skill and he has an act running over with "kind applause" features with- out tiring. Charles E. Evans and his as- sociate players scored strongly with "It's Up to You, William." It is an act that scores because of its lines and it is well played throughout. Macart's Monkeys formed another good feature. One of the comedian monkevs does his best to break ii p the show. Once he was rather clever in his interruptions, but like some of his human fellows he is overplaying a good idea and should be curbed. There are plenty of good ideas in the act, the bell ringing being the best. The barber shop i< so poorly done that it should be left out until further developed. Kelly and Vio- let te have their singing specialty and made good with the audience. Miss Vio- let te is showing some handsome gowns but seems to feel that this is all she is railed upon to do. The act was better when they sang more. Mr. Kelly should leave the advertising of one of his songs to its publishers. Violet Dale has her imi- tations, of which her Templeton is good and the rest not so much so. She woifld do better as a singer of sprightly songs than as an imitator. The Orpheus Com- edy Four work hard and to good effect. They are carrying a special drop with a tableau frame for one of the songs and in other ways evince their enterprise. Now t hey should make further improvement by causing the Buster Brown to keep his trousers down to the knee. He seems to feel that he is favoring the audience by making them into trunks. His legs are not in the Frankie Bailey class and he should be taken over into a corner and talked to. It is a blot on an otherwise good act. There is a very short and stingy motion picture this week. It dis- proves the adage that the best goods come in the smallest packages. HAMMERSTEIN'S. Henri de Vries holds over for a second week at Hanimerstein\s and is making a real hit. Here, if anywhere, he might be expected to fail to score, for the llammer- stein patron has been trained to the light and frothy specialties and girl acts. None the less the sombre trayedv of "A Case of Arson" held the attention and it was noteworthy that while his earlier changes were applauded, the audience became so interested as the case progressed that the scene in which John A rend confesses his crime was played with no applause at the finish, the audience being too absorbed in the play. It is a splendid piece of detail acting Mr. de Vries does in this scene, simple, tense and convincing. It Ikis no appeal of noise but scores through sheer sincerity. Rostow, who used to be called Sadi Alfarabi, does capital hand balancing and teaches native acts a lesson they will not learn through the equipment he em- ploys. Everything he uses is bright and dean and dresses the stage. The Rappo Sisters do several Russian dances but do not repeat their remarkable performance of half a dozen years ago at Koster & Bial's. They have a snappiness of work t hat is French rather than Russian. George Fuller Golden was one of the real hits of the bill. He changed his last offer- ing a trille to get more points out of the fact that he is on the same bill with De Vries and made more of a hit through t hat. He has the best monologue offering he ever had, though less intensity and a little more burlesque in his protean act would increase the effect of that portion of his performance. Ward and Curran presented "The Terrible .Judge" to the usual good effect and Marguerite and Han- 1< y showed some good work. The Bard Hi others offered their excellent acrobatic work. This is one act that proves that Americans are able to do as good acrobatic work as the imported turn if only the same attention be given to detail. In dressing, formation and tricks they take a back seat to none of the visitors from the other side of the water and they stand repeat engagements better than most, since t hey are always welcome. Frank Lynn moved up here from Proctor's. He has changed one song to good effect but he should cut out that appeal in which he expresses the wish that he may be able to go home and tell his friends that Ameri- cans can appreciate British humor. The trouble is that many of his jokes were worn out here before they were taken across the pond. The Two Pucks please when they sing and dance but even a matinee audience cannot laugh at the boy's monologue. The jokes should be cut out. The children do some clever work but in monologue the youngster is becom- ing rutted in a bad style and if he con- tinues will not be able to handle joke material when his maturer years might enable him to do so. There are pictures as usual. KEITH'S. Rather better than usual is the bill at Keith's this week. There is novelty in spots and except for two song acts in a rear end collision the turns are well laid out. The 1'roveanies and Keller's Ameri- can Zouaves are new here, the rest are mostly familiar, though J. Warren Keane <»llers a new program and is also found under the New Acts classification. One of the hits of the bill was Bobby North in his Hebrew monologue. North is apt t<> depart from his dialect at times when Ire grows excited about the point of a joke, but his monologue is good and possessed of philosophy as well as humor. Hi- parody rings in operatic airs in place of the popular songs and is as good as his talk. They made him come back after the next number had been posted. The Dillon Brothers were more willing and sang straight through their music books. They have too many songs with a trick refrain to preserve proportions, but the airs are all catchy and ^vwn or eight had to be sung before they could get away. They have a quiet but effective delivery and deserve to score. Emmet Devoy and com- pany have worked out "The Saintly Mr. Hillings'' into a lively sketch of action and pleased with it; the honors going to a small negro child used in the finish. A. \V. Asia showed his billiard table work and the Harmony Four paid more atten- tion to their comedy than they did to their music and with better results. Car- ter and Bluford had their international songs but were placed too far down on the bill and could not come up to what the audience expected at that hour. They still carry two sets of scenery one of which is very unnecessary. "Senator" Frank Bell sang one song and delivered a short stump speech of the old fashioned sort. He had the good sense to make his act short and refuse an encore that was sincere, with the result that he did not tire as his stuff would have done had it been longer. Brazil and Brazil did some acrobatic work that was fair and seemed to find it necessary to put in a sketch. They are more clever with their tricks than as performers and they would do well to leave the acting end alone. Mur- phy and Andrews have some very old jokes and wind up with a medley of grand operatic airs with words that would shock the original composers. They kick the poor old Miserere, now that it is down, and drag it from the rest that kind friends seek to secure for it. The Miserere is only good for parodies now. If they could get their dialogue up to the standard of their parody thev would he better than thev are. The Sawadas are Japanese, four in number, two of them being youngsters who are merely exhibited without being compelled to work. There is a little com- monplace juggling and some pedal work, the woman doing the latter. HURTIG & SEAMON'S. May Holey and her girls find the top place at the uptown house this week, though the Zancigs hold over and are one of the talked of features. The best thing about the Zancigs' work is that they (lif- ter from all others in sending a wider range of objects. Instead of confining their list to a couple of hundred familiar possessions they send names, dates and numbers as rapidly and without any ap- parent signaling. This enables them to run the act to the full time limit and hold the interest to the last. Miss Boley has an excellent offering. The girls who work with her are personable and clever, the act i> diversified and Miss Boley her- -elf as the cut-up has the sort of thing vaudeville wants. Howard and Howard are rather new and are almost clever. One of the men does Hebrew comedy as a messenger boy and .with a little more care in his characteriza- tion would have a new type the younger Hebrew. Hallback and Parquet te are a couple of negroes who have a very limited idea of coinedv and vet essav it. Thev do little dancing and the offering is badly put together. The Smedley Arthur sketch club is made one of the features, The Smedley youngsters will be out of the Fauntleroy class very noon and should he giving thought to a new offering to re place this. Their deepening voices belie their golden curls and their height is an- other bar. They take the usual number of encores but cannot continue to hold out much longer. Tom Hearu had them howl- ing with lii.s work, although crockery breakage is no new idea. His personality gains the laughs rather than his tricks, though his physical culture ideas are good and one or two are more than ordinarily clever. Loui.se Brehany shows poor taste in the selection of her songs and sings such as she has without brilliancy. She seems to take no interest in her work and this, combined with a rather cold per- sonality, militates against her. Deltorelli and Glissando have the same old ideas that have served so long. To those who have not seen them before the ideas are clever, but there are few in any audi- ence to whom their work is not familiar. Their best trick is playing the sleigh bells with their feet while they lie on their backs upon tables and hold newspapers between their eyes and the bells. FIFTY-EIGHTH STREET. Fred Walton is the headliner at Proc- tor's house on Fifty-eighth street and busi- ness has been big this week. Walton's comedy is of a sort to appeal to all floors. There is a wide range from the slapstick to the best of his work, but it is all good and most of it impresses the gallery as well as the orchestra patrons. Will Archer replaces the child used in the act surprisingly well and many accepted the girl's name on the program without question. The most noticeable difference was the alarming way the bed sagged when "Cissy" was tucked in. Mr. Walton's is an act that one may witness often and not tire of. Higo was one of the features, but was a bigger name on the program than on the stage. Wilfrid Clarke and his clever players scored their usual whirlwind hit with • What Will Happen Next?" and were one of the leaders in point of favor. Stuart Barnes won the house with some of his old jokes, but still sings a song that never was a good one even when it was new six or ei^ht months ago. He usually has a nice taste in songs. The Dollar Troupe did some acrobatics for n closing number and the Italian trio played favorites, giving the intermezzo from "Cavalleria" and "The Palms." The intermezzo was beautifully sung, hut later they strained slightly after effects and lost some of their skill, though tiny did not shriek as badly as most who do operatic numbers. Prclle's dogs were a good matinee feature, but did not get the night houses strongly until after the open- ing. The riders gained the first real Inugh. and after that the net made up lost ground. \llie Gilbert and her Summer Girls are doing better as regards the girls, but Miss Gilbert is apparently suffering from a cold, and her singing is an inflie- tioti. She should let the girls do the singing until such time as her own voice does not annoy the audience. She should change her songs if she desires to score n real hit. This is the present bail feature of the act. Tlie Heltons do a hand-bal- ancing act that would carry more weight did they cut out most of the comedy, none of which is of a vcrv high class. l.iii" - E IMiinkett, the vaudeville ngerit. will put "Panhandle Pete" on the road next Reason with a well known vaudc\iH< comedian in the title role.