Show IAl I 1 Dale Says I The French Finch 1 Idea of Uncle Toms Tom Cabin Has Hash I Champs h Suggestions n ARIS IS JULY Jux li You would scarcely have Dave recognized your y r oM o friend Un UnK Unde P K de c Tom of or the Cabin at the Porte St Martin in this th dizzy 4 metropolis laft t night They invited you to assist at La Case de do Tom as they Uey called it And as they had a perfect right ht to call it It if It they chose But Bt you would never have guessed gues ed It 11 except for the f fw w minutes when a few tew real colored ladies ladles Jn In Parisian lan corsets appeared and aag ng The Old Kentucky Home HOMie and other popular ditties At other times Umes the Louis XIV seemed Just a trifle bewildering Ing and the sight of S St Clair at attired attired a tired in hi a sort of Chauncey Olcott getup was wan too much for my As AZ for the characters I wonder what Mrs Beecher Stowe who according to Ute tile a dans le Ie Connecticut would have thought of them I love a puzzle in its proper place but I never care to tow w rry my m in head hed at the theatre The Heroine of oC the boulevard version of ot Uncle Tom is I TOM E Elisa made mad up upa as a the tile typical lost heroine of melodrama Elsa Ellsa is 18 everything She he is i played by Mile Mlle Gilda Gilds Darthy earthy who does the heroine In a set of clothes that If worn in Uncle Tom days would have had bad as II wide an Influence Influence ence once on Oft th community as 8 the book itself Elsa EUsa runs through Uncle Tom calling out Je perdue and vary ary varying ing ln it tt with an It occasional met moi I Her is called Henri and he heis heIs heIs is a sert rt of Lord Fauntleroy with Champs Elysee suggestions u and an awful propensity tty to whine and cry Ma maman Eum and Henri cross eross the Ice In the approved American style They even do it better than we saw naw it done at the Academy of Music last season and there tb re is 18 a beautiful trap in this Porte St Martin ice Henri sinks beneath the wave for a minute or two but it is a It well regu regulated regulated regulated springy sort of wave that flaps him back to Ellsa Elisa in time for the thelIna flea lIna curtain I What puzzled me in French Uncle Tom was a brace of comedy coons entitled Bengali and Philemon They were made up to look like the black face comedian who crack jokes it t the continuous One wore a cockade kade hat bat beck trousers and a flowing bright red necktie n tle The other was similarly clad but minus the cockade hat They were sup supposed supposed posed OtJe to be exceedingly funny and the calls them the joy of the piece Occasionally they spoke poke in what was supposed to be b broken French which was wu even e more ludicrous than our stage notions of broken English In the ease e ca at the Porte St Martin was as Coquelin cadet who played a arole arole arole role entitled Bird pronounced Beard Bird was a gentle gentleman man ma who appeared to live Uve In a very handsome Parisian apartment most ar artistically aUy panelled He wore a chintz peignoir and was wan at once on recognized as highly sympathetic He ole e delivered long and lovely addresses addre es on the subject of emancipation and rather r 1 er a neat thing in wives When the curtain rose ro and Madame Bird were discovered drinking coffee out of silver stIver cups cu In a 8 highly democratic way wa It was to thin Louis XIV apartment that Ella Elisa and nd le Ie petit Henri d after alter they had crossed the ice Elisa EU a still wearing her white and yellow opera pera cloak which must have been von very v cozy for Ice l nl Then Simon Legree at least I suppose t f character char called caned Haley was w s meant for Simon Legree came on to hunt for Elsa EI I and Henri with a whip 1 in I n Ws Ms Is hand He also o brought with him right Into Birds drawing draIng J room a 1 large greyhound The dog was supposed to sniff Ellen Elisa It was wan no relation to the blood bloodhounds bloodhounds 1 hounds who pursued the poor lady across the ice lee But Bird put Haley and the Haley dog off 01 the scent scant t and the gallery applauded with fero ferocious ious cious c fervor when the comedy coons Philemon and Bengali locked Haley In Ing Ini Ina g e room and Elisa with her petit Henri Hend escaped e ped through the hall ball door into t the he t Champe Perhaps it the Champs eft but it might 1 have been and should have been Eva appeared to be a very nice girl just out She was wa not programmed as 58 Eva EvaIn in fact tact that classic name did not appear at all aU But she was the daughter of St Clair and seemed particularly addicted to petting le Ie petit Henri Eva or whatever called wore a very ery nice muslin confection the kind you buy at the Magasins du Louvre during the semmer sales Ales She was wu quite quit Parisian but a very simple and unaffected young person rather r ran a an improvement ment upon the real Eva with whom we are so o intensely and per persistently persistently a familiar famUlar There was no Topsy which seemed rather a d pity There wire w re Chloe and Dolly and Jenkins and Tomkins and and Mathews Even Mark the Lawyer Lawyel was missing like a landmark pulled down obliterated Uncle Tom however was quite the conventional thing although I hated to hear him say Aliens Allons Allons as though he had bad been taking lessons in n French conversation r Uon He was highly colored and had white hair hairM hairM M Caray Carey played the part but he had evidently never studied it in Amer Ainer America AmerIca ica l ea His conception concep on of the role however was not very wide of ot the mark and h he would have passed pas muster even at the Star theatre The Th real colored singing went very well with the audience Nobody un understood understood understood what t meant but it made its appearance A gentleman near me criticised the d b dancing very severely It is so cold English he j said but hut as I saw the perspiration dripping from the poor colored youths on this baking Parisian night I have cared to watch the dances if they had heed been warmer It was the same gentleman who before the piece began beg n asked me what it was whether it was a farce When I told him that it was a drama lie he quite astonished and extremely disappointed There were four acts and eight tableaux but the production was not regardless of ot expense It was Wag just about as an cheap as an it possibly could be e and Birds handsomely appointed Louis XIV V apartment looked AS though It had done dohe service for years in every production that the Porte St Martn had bad made Mile Mlle Gilda Glida Dar Pa iy who played Elisa is a very comely young person p and anda andi a clever actress with economical proclivities I never care are for Coquelin the younger r He seEn ii to have hav imbibed all the mechanical theories of ol his father t ther with none non of or tn th tM older oWer ability ty Co to make them momentarily lumin luminous ous ens He fixed d up Bird to please the giddy Parisian public and aed aJ d as sE he M ot tons of sympathy through his work he probably pleased himself as aswell aswell S Sw well w 11 Still I cant see why the spent a whole page on Mme Beech It was wan as thoughtful but quite unnecessary Uncle Toms Cabin in French is III eminently and delightfully continental It is quite as s French as the American idea of Parisian life in America No international com please |