Theatrical Goods, Domestic and Imported

With the Rate of Exchange Apparently in America's Favour

GEORGE S. CHAPPELL

THE New York theatrical season, like the subway, has a great many openings, and it is physically impossible to be at all of them simultaneously. In fact, there are not enough nights in the week to enable even the most ardent devotee of the stage to keep up a 100 per cent batting average' of attendance.

I have often envied the ubiquity of the professional orator who is able to address the Union League Club, the Bronx Boy Scouts, and the McGuffy Chowder and Marching Club all in one evening. A critic is more limited. He is on peg-post duty until the drop of the curtain. If he executes a sneak from some dreary performance, he is never certain that it does not suddenly buck up in the last act—in a way that might have entirely revised his opinion.

Inspired by this noble sense of duty, I sat manfully through the much-heralded production of Mary at the Knickerbocker, hoping against hope that something would turn up to vindicate the glowing advance reports of this musical comedy, which is said to have captured the provinces by storm. If only that entrancing tune The Love Nest could have been rigidly barred from New. York prior to the opening, if only orchestra leaders, music publishers and phonograph manufacturers could have entered into a conspiracy of silence, I amsure the show would have floated into popularity on the waves of this melody alone.

But, even before the curtain rose, I had learned to play The Love Nest quite skilfully on the piano and by the time I can accomplish that with a musical composition it must be old, indeed. One of the tragedies of my life is that I can never master a piece until everyone is ready to cry out with despair at the opening bars. Janet Yelie sings it rather better than I play it, which is high praise, but oh! her side-partner, Mr. McGowan, as Jack Keene! Lyric pain, my dears, lyric pain!

The rest of the performance is of the treat'em-rough variety, particularly that of an incipient-Tanguay person who seemed to delight the out-of-town buyers. The book is based on the housing problem and the greatest applause is for real smoke coming out of a model-bungalow chimney which, spmehow, as dramatic art, doesn't convince me at all.

The "Half Moon"

WHILE we are learnedly discussing musical comedy, let it be said that Victor Jacobi has equipped Mr. Cawthorn and company with a score which, in my opinion, takes the prize, up-to-date, not even excepting the creations of our imported violinist-composers. The music alone would make the evening at the Liberty Theatre enjoyable and, fortunately, its interpretation is entrusted to rather more than ordinarily capable hands, or should I say feet and vocal cords? The inevitable pairs of lovers, played by Ivy Sawyer, May Thompson, Oscar Shaw and Joseph Santley, dance gracefully and sing well to Mr. Jacobi's captivating tunes, and Mr. Cawthorn proves that he is by no means dependent upon Dutch dialect to put his lines across with agreeable intelligence. The book, as hinted, is of the conventional model, but the general good-taste of the production, plus Mr. Jacobi's music, combine to make the Half Moon an entertainment of decided charm.

Princes ancient or modem are almost always attractive and we have two in stageland at present writing. Mr. Faversham, deserting for the moment the roles of strenuous tragicomedy has gone in frankly for cheerful storytelling in the revised version of The Prince and the Pauper. The tale is such a one as we should delight in telling our little ones when they crowd about our knees of an evening crying: "A story, Papa, tell us a story." Of course, it is an established fact that on such occasions the parental mind is a total blank. Father can't think of the faintest shadow of a plot and that is why we have the fearful Mother West-Wind sort of thing.

To all tired parents The Prince and the Pauper is heartily recommended—and it will entertain them as well as their offspring. Ruth Findlay plays the dual title role with boyish directness and charm and Mr. Faversham endows the swashbuckling Miles Hendon with just the right combination of robust vigor and gentleness. A brilliant performance of the Princess Elizabeth is given by Clare Eames, who brings a quick and vivid intelligence to a part which might easily be commonplace. I will back Miss Eames as a star-performer in future dramatic events. All in all, The Prince and the Pauper is delightful.

Our other Prince, the youthful hero of A. E. Thomas's comedy, Just Suppose, connects itself with the more recent history of a royal visitor to our shores. This again, as Mr. Thomas has presented it, is pure fairy-tale, made timely by the promptness with which the author has seized upon his material. Fortunately, no signs of undue haste mar the pleasantly languid atmosphere of the Virginia home in which Patricia Collinge, as the gentle southern beauty with whom the heir-incognito falls in love, succeeds in making Just Suppose seem quite possible. To portray a Prince of such well-known winning qualities as those of our recent visitor is a daunting assignment, for which Geoffrey Kerr, likewise, is excellently equipped. Leslie Howard, as the Prince's pal, Sir Calverton Shipley, and Fred Kerr as the genial old Marquise of Carnaby, are as pleasant a pair of noblemen as I have ever met, and Mrs. Thomas Whiffen as Mrs. Carter Stafford proved, as always, that we have an aristocracy of our own, of which we may well be proud. Just Suppose is sentimental stuff, if you will, but pleasantly so. In this prohibition age I am conscious of a rather inordinate appetite for sweets.

Bab, the sub-deb, may well fall into the candy-category above mentioned, with the added piquancy of the truly remarkable facility of Miss Helen Hayes. This young lady is so distinctly an artist that I am sure she needs no lecture on the importance of being not too earnest. She has become a star by right of conquest. Her beautifully shaded performance in Dear Brutus and later in Clarence find a fuller expression and a more exacting test in Bab, a test to which she responds with uncanny skill. Miss Hayes acts the way Marilyn Miller .dances. If, occasionally, she comes down on one heel a little harder than necessary', it is easily forgiven. Tom Powers as Carter Brooks deserves special mention in a cast which combines to put Bab on the red-starred list.

A Few Importations

THERE is, I think, a tendency toward critical kow-towing before anything which comes to us from the pen of so graceful an author as John Galsworthy. When the offering wears the laurels of a great London success one is particularly prone to pay obeisance and say, "That is great. London says it is great; it must be great." But for the life of me, I cannot see anything great in The Skin Game. As it is played at the Bijou, it is entertaining and worth while, and, were it done superbly, I can conceive that it might be absorbing. But, after all, the matter under discussion, the right of the pushing, striving Hornblowers to build pottery chimneys under the noses of the aristocratic Hillcrists, seems rather trivial stuff. Nor can I see in it, as do some, the magnificent outlines of a vast allegory of war. In any case, it gets nowhere.

Mr. Galsworthy's philosophy in general is summed up in the song, "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way". His total contribution is a shrug, his spiritual gift, weariness—war weariness, perhaps. This is excusable, but not admirable. Nevertheless, Mr. Galsworthy makes the play interesting by well-written dialogue with real heart in it. He presents the problem as he sees it and he is an artist. Dramatically the play has the rare merit of an interest which is sustained up to the final curtain instead of suffering from the usual second-act breakdown. Most of the cast play with a lamentable lack of distinction, from which I will except Miss Joan MacLean as Jill and the minor bits, the evicted tenants, the ferret-faced agent and the country auctioneer, all of whom do much to create the proper atmosphere. After seriously trying to be sympathetic with The Skin Game, I could not help sympathizing with the matter-of-fact lady back of me who remarked to her husband: "Well that's the way it is with country real-estate. You buy a nice little bungalow up in Larchmont and someone comes along and builds a Swiss-cheese factory next to it."

Heartbreak House is another importation which commands respectful attention rather by virtue of its authorship than for what it accomplishes. He is a stalwart Shavian indeed who is continuously amused during this longest and least definite of Shaw's plays. Yet he is as truly dull who finds nothing to cackle over in the witty Irishman's observations. It may or may not be drama. In the grand old Greek sense of "drama—a thing done", it certainly fails, for nothing is done and everything is talked about. But it is cleverly talked about and if you care for that sort of thing, static conversational comedy, you will like Heartbreak House. It is by no means Shaw at his best, but it is still Shaw. For the rest, the Theatre Guild has given the play a truly remarkable presentation and has proved again the tremendous value of this serious and intelligent organization.