Darkest Before Dawn

Mr. Belasco Succeeds Brilliantly with the Surf, and "Manhattan" Again Tells "Cinderella"

HEYWOOD BROUN

IN the late war artillerymen had a system of firing one shot which was long and another which was short and then splitting the bracket (at least that is the way we remember it) and landing squarely upon the objective. Theatrical producers seem to be working on some such plan, but they are much more prodigal with preliminary shots. By this time a considerable margin of error has been established. The bracket is still leering.

David Belasco has come much the closest to a direct hit. Shore Leave provides excellent entertainment and its first act is genuine light comedy. The rest is good enough, but nobody should be expected to get up and cheer for mere sufficiency. We are moved to a certain amount of wonder by some of the tricks which have been introduced into the production, but that emotion is not quite enthusiasm. For instance, Shore Leave possesses the best off stage surf which we have ever encountered in the theatre. In some respects it outdoes the ocean itself. There is never a missed beat in the rhythm of Mr. Belasco's raging sea. He has managed to obtain obedience where others have failed. When Mr. Belasco tells the ocean to stop it complies without a whimper. Not once does it interrupt any of the major players, for this surf is ever so nicely synchronized to the dialogue. Indeed anybody who wants ta might say that Mr. Belasco has hitched his ocean to a Starr.

The ship's band floating some two miles off the backdrop is also convincing and seems to have a premonition of the exact moment when to strike up for sentimental effect. And in addition there is an admirable ship's washbasin which fairly stops the show in the third act. Indeed the atmosphere is ample.

The Blight of "The Easiest Way"

WE happened to like the acting even better than the atmosphere. Frances Starr, cast as a seagoing seamstress, has her best role in several seasons. Some of her sewing is plain and some is plaintive, but the character entrusted to her is far more spirited than usual. We have a sneaking notion that Miss Starr's long participation in The Easiest Way in the role of Laura Murdock put a certain blight upon her. Being abject and fate-ridden for dramatic effect blanketed her buoyancy. Many of the roles which followed were in somewhat the same spirit. The theatregoer was led into a state of mind which made him wonder, whenever Miss Starr came on the stage, just how soon she would burst into tears. In Shore Leave she cries a little but some of her archness is quite dry. Decidedly she is mirthful and she accomplishes her comedy with quick sharp thrusts. There are moments in which one is strongly reminded of Laura Hope Crews. The same ability to indicate the humorous aspects of grief is evident. Miss Starr gives us, then, a light comedy performance finished, brisk and somehow more stalwart than almost anything which she has done in several seasons.

James Rennie is the gob who loved the seagoing seamstress—at least he loved her in time, and his performance is equally gratifying. Few of our young players are anything like so accomplished in footwork. Rennie slides about the stage like a Benny Leonard seeking an opening. His sense of timing is almost perfect. In addition to grace, he suggests strength. We have no notion of how many times Mr. Rennie can raise a hundred pound dumbbell over his head in private life (perhaps we had better say hundred pound weight instead of dumbbell), but on the stage one gets the impression that he is weathered and hardboiled right down to sinew. To see Rennie in Shore Leave is to remember over so regretfully that he did not play Liliom. Schildkraut had to keep working every second he was on the stage in order not to allow the audience to forget that he was a roughneck. Rennie carries the thing off with such confidence that there is no argument about it. He is able to establish himself with a gesture as simple as that of throwing away a cigarette.

His voice is at least as rough as his neck. Having a distaste for velvet, Rennie's leathery tones fall pleasantly upon our ear. He belongs to the small but select group of habitually hoarse players. Probably there is no logic in it, but hoarseness invariably suggests sincerity to us. After all, there is a certain inherent reproach in the phrase "silver tongued." Rennie's voice is not even plated. All of it is honest brass. None of it tinkles. Such a voice helps to create the illusion of a downright person. Bronchitis must inevitably make for brevity. All hoarse players move us tremendously whether in tragedy or comedy. It is easier for them to arouse pity. Among the hoarse ones we remember particularly Ethel Barrymore, Elsie Janis, Bessie McCoy and Raymond Hitchcock. All are marked by a touch of Jonathan Swift's Houyhnhnmity.

THE story part of "Shore Leave," which commences with tolerable plausibility, turns broadly and rather clumsily farcical in the second act. In the first act Bilge Smith, the gob, meets for a moment Connie Martin, the dressmaker. He promises to come again, but forgets it promptly and Connie doesn't. Accordingly when the freighter which she has inherited is brought back from the mouth of the Ganges, Miss Martin gives a party for all the Smiths in the United States Navy. Bilge turns up and won't marry Connie because she is rich. Naturally she tries to give her money away and at length a compromise is achieved. The author of the play, whose name we almost allowed to be drowned out by David Belasco's metronomic and all-pervading surf, is Hubert Osborne.

This antipathy to money displayed by Bilge Smith in Shore Leave is quite a common phenomenon among heroes in plays this year. We only hope that it will not tend to spread across the footlights and reach the manager and his men in the box office. In Manhattan the hero has money of his own but he simply cannot endure the thought of the heroine having any. Perhaps he was shocked at the suddenness of her wealth. A legacy from South Africa popped into the play and smote her fairly before anybody could say "fiddlesticks."

Cinderella Again

BEFORE that she had been a child of the gutter, a shop girl, a typist and a secretary. The play seems intent upon putting thoughts into the head of stenographers. According to the wise man-about-town in Manhattan it is usually assumed that every writer has an affair with his secretary. Duncan Van Norman, the blueblooded hero of Manhattan, couldn't bear the thought that people might gossip about him and say that he had made his wife an honest woman. He felt that it would be even worse if the scandal mongers said that she had made him a rich man. Almost an act and a half was required to iron out these difficulties.

Merely for the purpose of solving the quirk a minor character is introduced late in the play, but under the skilful handling of Albert Gran this particular role, which is that of Hendrick Van Dekkar, a Dutch novelist, becomes much the most interesting figure in the comedy. It is an enormously able performance. Mr. Gran has taken an assignment to be broadly comic and has managed to be human and charming as well.

Manhattan makes the four hundred and twentieth version of Cinderella which has been seen in New York during the last three seasons. Lory, the poor little shop girl, never had a chance. Until she met up with Duncan Van Norman she had never known soft cushions, trees, green fields or a cow. He, in turn, wrote for The Atlantic Monthly and was quite ignorant of life. Indeed he was so exceedingly guileless that he thought it possible to ask a young woman out to supper without insulting her. Naturally she spurned his suggestion and his wealth and all the rest of it. However, she compromised. Instead of going out to supper with Duncan Van Norman, Lory married him.

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In spite of the fact that the play circles a track much trampled by other dramas there are amusing moments, Lory, the heroine, talks nothing but epigrams and all of them are in slang. This is a little trying, but she does not always miss. Her announcement that she lives on "One of those streets where Greenwieh Village quits kidding itself" deserves to be preserved in a better play.

Marguerite Maxwell plays Lory and she gives the impression of being an actress trained over long in stock. She works prodigiously hard and hammers all her points and yet she has a certain verve which is now and again helpful to the play. Hubert Druce is a butler and manages to be very amusing without any effort at all. Since this is a shop-girl play there is, of course, one young woman with a hacking cough who needs good air. In the fourth act they give it to her. Mary Blair does much better with the role than the part deserves.

Whispering Wives is a melodrama in which the old captain of finance-is murdered in his library. The person you think did it didn't do it at all. We are pledged to sec-recy and can't tell who it really was. Worse than that, by this time we have forgotten.

The Monster concerns a maniacal doctor who traps the hero and heroine in his cellar and purposes to vivisect the heroine. At this point we happened to be called away, but we don't suppose he did.

After all, the play is called in the advertisements "a merry thriller."

The Woman Who Laughed has only three characters and two of them get tied together with a rope. One of them is the husband and at the other end of the clothesline is the woman who isn't his wife. By means of the trick the wife manages to convince her husband of his mistake. Will Rogers can do ever so much better things with an even shorter rope and he is much quicker about it. The rope in Mr. Locke's comedy is all right, but the patter doesn't get over.