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Show NEW YORK THEA TRICALS BY FRANKLIN FYLES. New York, Nov. 25. Adeline Genee won't speak a word in "The Bachelor Belles" because she knows she is a satisfying dancer. Emma Thentini can't talk intelligible English in Vr' "Naughty Marietta," May Irwin is loquacious un-amusingly un-amusingly in "Getting a Polish," because she has nothing funny to say. What! you exclaim that jolly humorist scant of laughability? It is strange but true. "Getting a Polish" and "Two Men and a Girl" are aliases for plays that have had other names before coming into New York. Desirous of concealing con-cealing bad pasts, and believing they have become good by reformation, they introduce themselves as new. The "Girl" now coupled with "Two Men" was "The Motor Girl" in several cities; next she got out of an automobile into a sky yacht and called herself "The Aeroplane Girl," and now she W kites into town by an air route, announcing companion com-panion tourists in "Two Men and a Girl." All of which means, of course, that she has striven hard-to hard-to lift failure Into success. A nice, neat little Elsa Ryan alights in one of those monoplanes that look like wide-winged birds. Two bewitched men fly away after her in a race with her as the prize to the winner. This is a show of beauty on the bounce and drama on the bum. Bailey and Austin balance the dainty grace of Elsa and the other frolic girls with all the stunts they ever did in vaudeville and a few more. The merriest moment Is when Bailey or Austin kicks Austin or Bailey in the face. A fashion as a moving picture discloses a secret se-cret In hobble skirtery. A girl mince-steps out in a gown that girts her lef ? as though the"y belong to a shackled convict. She contrives to waltz with a man by beinf, a pivot around which he gyrates, thus reversing the usual action. Suddenly Sudden-ly her petticoats drop off, and seemingly unaware of the fact, she shows the workings of a waltzing girl. But not as formerly usual. The shucking of the kobblu skirt doesn't set free her neatly stockinged and drawersed limbs. Why do they patter and shy-stop restrictedly just as before?! Because her garters are linked closely together, so that bifurcate movement is possible only from the knees down. Thus does modern drama become be-come instructive. After Madge Carr Cooke had become known in "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," and William Wil-liam Hodge had passed from that into "The Man from Home," a play resembling both pieces was written at the two performers. It missed him, but struck her, and very transiently. "If I Had Money" had her for its woman who drudged in a shack of a boarding house and built a castle in the air to laze in when ore should be found in n mine that she owned half of. "Getting a Polish," with which May Irwin comes back to Broadway, is that . , play under a change of name from "Mrs. Jim;" ' but she has neglected to put into it any such humor as made her a joy roller 'round the circuits for many years. Why should any one sympathize with Miss Irwin over her loss of time and money in a futile second trial of this play? She is wealthy through shrewd Investment of her large earnings; and, besides, a short, cheap payroll and a meagre mounting keep the cost down. What about the wasted time and money of the people who pay half a dollar up to two for an unamusing play? I write like that because only an hour ago I heard a-man on his way out of the theatre, say, "Poor Mayto be buncoed with rot like this," while a "- woman said: "She is a dear, but her chump company com-pany ruins her chances." Why pity a gifted actress act-ress whom popularity has enriched, when she brings out a poor play poorly? Hasn't she been paid a dollar for every dollar's worth of good humor that she has sold and the public has bought? - May Irwin has been a favorite funny woman with me so very long, and I have petted her so much that surely I may chastise her for "Getting a Polish." The story may impress you, however, ggl as one that ought to yield a congenial role for May. It makes her an industrious, uneducated widow boarding Montana miners. Her husband was killed by failing to strike gold after feeling sure of it. She encourages his partner to keep on digging year after year, and feeds and lodges him, too, until he breaks intc a a auriferous vein. They will share and share alike the fortune that is in sight. The man experts they will marry, also; but she leaves him behind while she goes to Europe with her boy and girl to "get a polish." By a few minuter after 8 o'clock the audience know that the miner (personated by George Faw-cett, Faw-cett, the only facile actor in the company- will ( follow her across the ocean, find her "Unhappy in luxurious quarters and take her back to married contentment in her Montana home, which he has remodelled and refurnished in the ways she dreamed of when si e had no money including the one ornament thrt sta longed for in her wild flights of fancy, a big iron mooze in the dooryard. A. ready and prolific humorist might write out a comedy from that scenario with abundant matter for May Irwin to be funny with, and abundant action ac-tion in which she might employ such clever comedians come-dians and charming girls as used to be her stage companions. Not once is there a hearty laugh; even giggles and snickers are infrequent; and the only applause is when two of her four songs are satisfactory. A singular sight yesterday afternoon was the parquet of a theate filled completely, and by women mostly, at $2.50 apiece, to see a performance, perform-ance, and one actress on the stage being raptly listened to. The single entertainer was Ellen Terry, once Sir Henry Irving's dramatic comrade. com-rade. Because Sarah Bernhardt is making an American tour which so she has said will end 1 with her sudden death from heart disease before an audience, our people perhaps expect with dread, of course, not hope that Miss Terry will make a stage tragedy of her death. Terry is two years or so the junior of Bernhardt that is about sixty-seven; and they are alike proficients in the art of looking ten to fifteen or twenty years younger than they are if trickily lighted and Bhaded. Terry is portlier than Bernhardt but smoother. She had the auditorium darkened almost black, bo that a very dim stage might seem illumined more than it was.' She wore a Grecian sort of flowing white robe and her hair was in a classic coiffure. She stood at a high table on which lay an open book of such passages of Shakespeare as she was to half read and half recite, with interspersing inter-spersing accounts of the plots and characters. The print was by hand in large letters; for her memory and eyesight are both poor, and she won't wear glasses. The other day, when she couldn't command a line from either book or recollection, she burst into hysterical weeping and sympathetic women sobbed with her. Juliet with a tragic touch and blithe heroines from Shakespeare comedies were given with acted passages once in a while. The charm of the Terry personality was still appreciable, but plainly plain-ly and pitifully the great artist was nervously weak if not seriously ailing. "Naughty Marietta" gets along with Emma Trentini's unintelligible English because it gets, in her, the distinction of a soubrette from grand opera. Fritz! Scheff has been coined into much money by putting her into broken English as a leader in musical comedy, so why not Emma Trentinl? Rida Johnson Young wrote a piece for the purpose. She placed and timed it in New Orleans when pirates sailed the Gulf of Mexico and cassattes that is, misbehaving French girls were sent there to mate with Louisiana settlers. Marietta is rougish, hardly naughty, surely not wicked and a daughter of Italian nobility unjustly transported. Marietta is brought into the Place d'ArmeB with a band of cassattes; she Is prankish subse quently in a marionette theatre where she is rl wooed variously, and is finally she is happily be- j JH trothed at a ball of the Jeunesse Dance Club. ilH "Bachelor Belles" has Adeline Genee for a tH silent star actress. She needs but to foot it j dumbly In "Bachelor Belles" to get to the front jH centre; for she is, I think, the most agile and iH graceful dancer now alive .and kicking. She has H nothing whatever to do v. ith the coterio of bache- jH lor belles who resolve that they hate men and 'H will never, never shift from maidens to wives. At iH the end of the first act she enters on the points of fl her two bigger toes, with her back to the spec- M tators; and then, turning a faceful of sweet smile H tn the footlights, she becomes the premier of a M ballet in the old style of fluffy short skirts. Mid- H way of the second act, she flits and flutters airily into sight again in th semblance of a butterfly, H with her bodice bearing the head of that gay flyer, i'H its wings spread with her skirt and her arms fjH and legs so disportlve that one can hardly tell il which pair of limbs are carrying her off the :1 ground as much as- on it among girls gulsed as ll roses. At the close of the play she reappears aB !1 a Hungarian dancer in neat tan boots along with iH the rest of the national peasant costume and with M a wondrously nimble man for a companion. That . 'M being over she poses in the midst of the com- M pany as though she had been the heroine of the play's story. M 1 Not any longer ago than when Victorien Sar- H dou was considered tho master-technician of the H dramatic age, the majority of modern plays began M with a scene between a maid and a manservant, M In which they chatted of the master and the mis- j sua and thus prepared the audience with charity, jH though badly for the story to be told. It is not jH like that when the curtain rises on "The Thunder- bolt," for eight of the leading nine characters of JH the comedy are seated on the stage. Even to JH people who know no more about play writing than tH just the difficulty of introducing more than one H personage at a time, Arthur "Wing Plnero's daring H whets curiosity. One scrutinizes this new work H of the recognized master-dramatist of the day for H H a hesitancy or slip, just as one rivets his eyes on H a wire-walker undertaking some unprecedented H But no scrutiny can catch Plnero In the small H est misstep. The eight personages of this play H (latest of Sir Arthur's to reach us; though in Lon- H don it was the forerunner of "Mid-Channel") are H the relations of a wealthy English brewer who lies H dead in the room above. Though estranged from H him for a quarter of a century, they hastened to H his house when news reached them of his ap- H proaching end. And now, behind window-blinds H close drawn "in respect" for the dead, they are H sitting watching, with narrow, anxious eyes, for a H will, and also for any trickery amongst them- H selves. Three are brothers of the dead man, with H their wives; the other two a sister and her hus- H band. Though all actuated by grasping greed, not H one type is a duplicate of the other. Indeed, it is H hardly too much to say that each is fine drawn H enough td be the central character of a play. m Pinero handles his opening scene with the H dexterity of a virtuoso. Yet how simply! The H ninth character on the stage is the dead man's H lawyer. He must needs ask questions of these H unfamiliar claimants of the estate. Not one ques- H tion is wasted, and how easily and with apparent M artlessness the answers acquaint us with the B petty meannesses of this middle-class provincial H family. (Sir Arthur, by the way, does not deslg- H nate his comedy as "a play" but as "an episode H in the history of a provincial family.") No sooner H has the dramatist individualized this family group B than he brings in another lawyer, whose further M questions bring in all we need to know. H One might go on throughout "The Thunder- m bolt" pointing out rare touches of technical per- M fection; but as their purpose is to conceal art, H let us simply tell the story they present. The H brewer did make a will, but after his death one M of the sisters-in-law destroyed it. The poverty m oi her own children and her ambition for them B! serves as some slight excuse; when coupled with H1 the fact that her husband will not thus inherit all, m but share equally with the others; and that the ' woman named as beneficiary in the will is an un- m known resident of Paris. But when she does turn 1 up she proves to be a lovely, brave and self-re specting girl, the illegitimate daughter of the de- f ceased. Here then, is a hopeless situation. The reputed re-puted robber cannot turn back without branding her own children as the progeny of a thief; so she lets the search for the will go on. At the end of a month, all necessary legal means having been employed, the family assembled for another conference con-ference and final division of the estate. Just as her husband starts for the meeting, however, the thief realizes she can bear her shame no longer, and confesses her crime to him. As played by Thais Lawton and A. F. Anson, this scene brought the second act to an emotional climax that might well have been the "making" of almost any other play. But the third act carried the intensity to an even higher pitch. Largely it is given up to the sordid heartlessness of the sister and the other brothers. All are engrossed in plans upon which they have already embarked to luxuriate in their new-found fortunes. Then comes the thunderbolt. The discouraged and downtrodden brother hurls it into their petty midst in a form of a declaration declara-tion that there was a will; he saw it; and that he destroyed it. Consternation follows. The three couples run about like frantic cowards on a sinking sink-ing ship. They snarl anl r,nap at one another, each one thinking only of his own vanishing share -in the estate. Then one of them discovers a flaw in the confessed thief's story. For the hounded brother has, of course, taken his wife's account of how she stole the will upon himself along with the responsibility. One by one the relatives question ques-tion him, closing in upon him like hounds upon their prey. And very like the last stand of a desperate des-perate animal, wounded 1o the death, is the fight that this man puts up for his erring wife, until finally he collapses beneath their onslaught. It is a great scene, ard it hardly is an over-statement to say that the New Theatre company acts it greatly. |