Show Ades Ad s New Play Artie r ie BY FRANKLIN FYLES I New York Nov 1 IThe The play ot of a the tho week here is George GeorgeAdes Georgedes fides Ades des funny one Artie but first attention at attention attention is demanded by the Japanese tragedy of The Martyr because it welters In Jn gore and looks like lile a spot in a battlefield that shrieks for surgical aid ald It is an exposition of the Japanese custom of or Maybe you have read that Arnold Daly a h young actor said he was go going going going ing to attempt In New York Tork a Theatre of Ideas Id ag which would be superior n art and letters to the in stager stage shows and an n intellectual uplift er of ot drama in theatrical America Tt It ItIs is a singular characteristic c of ot those es s says fays f in to theatrical idealism that the ideas are almost always ghastly in one way or another Dalys program began with The Shirkers at the start of at which a crazed man m n a woman oman and at the end of which she completed the homicide all by herself The Th Shirk Shirkers Shirkers Shirkers ers was a problem pro em drama of or lone lonesomeness lonesomeness the Fist of at it being that t t per persona peron sona s on who shirk their duty of living and slink out of life Ufe by suicide are arc cow cowards cowards cowards ards Do you see Four audiences did but they the go way away to tell that the problem and its Us elucidation were entertaining for the house was too nearly empty to warrant a contin continuance continuance continuance and that murder play ceased abruptly Still theres the making of or ofa ora ofa a drama in that theme As CM C M I S McLellan tackles it in this t a man in a 0 London Landon L crowd and a 0 man manon manon on a bleak ak English heath are alike lonesome and one woman bears the deadly brunt of both their morbid pre predicaments predicaments The particulars are not net worth giving here But there is the subject if It you QU are ar a genius or if you OU think you are for you to write a great novel or 31 drama with a lonely man in its center 1 About Aboul the tragedy of ot The Tha Martyr It Is la spoken by b four Jap Japanese Japanese Japanese anese in their native language A summary of the plot is printed in the playbill and the audience openly reads read J JIt it That is noteworthy No modish New Yorker would confess ignorance of f French by b perusing a synopsis of a Bernhardt play or of ot opera In Italian or German or even of or Nazimova in Russian but it will do to confess inability in inability Inability I I ability to understand Japanese How However However However ever the action of The Martyr is so co o graphic that the purport is as clear as asa asa s sa a voiceless pantomime The two male actors are arc not such neat trim little Japs Jap as the recent war in Asia pic pictured pictured pictured to the world in soldierly arrays arra s i They were tall lank fellows in the i costumes of their country with faces ugly as gorillas when In repose and frightful fri as demons when In agitation I have hae seen such faces faceson on Oriental Pane fan vases and screens and I recall some like them In night nightmares nightmares nightmares mares but never hitherto have I seen sen them alive The two actresses dont match up with Gilberts flattering travesties of Tokio girl girls In The Mikado nor with nith those posed for Japanese art in cross legged squats and curt curtsies curtsies curtsies sies nor yet et have they any of the quaint prettiness of the Geishas that I saw at the St StLouis Louis fair and are com common common common mon I suppose in the tea houses of t Japan Can it be that the aristocratic ladies ladles of Tokio are so much worse off of for good looks than the public dan danseuses danseuses Hanako the starred tragedienne tragedienne tragedienne enne of the company enacts a belle belie supposed to be irresistibly charming yet jet et she could be no a wo woman woman woman man unless her pigmy size were in increased increased increased creased to ordinary stature At the beginning of the play pla she thrums a c mandolin to please her lover dances awkwardly awkward 1 on stilts and is clumsily blithesome in antics that make her and I the three others look like decrepit yet et still tm tricky monkeys in a cage Out of that crude comedy of gf a young youn g Japanese girls merriment comes a 3 ga tragedy more hideous in realism than any on which Caucasian drama presumes to exhibit Hanako for a Joke changes clothes with her maid servant senant and places here hero where the lover will mis mistake mistake mistake take her for the mistress He is so angered an angered b red by b the substitutes fooling t that he 10 is about to prick her with his sword when hen the ladys brother thinking it itIs ItIs itis Is she who is thus mistreated draws his blade on the suitor The actors are arc and The ugliness ugliness ness of ot their faces becomes mobile as they fight They are what our actors call muggers Their grimaces are as violently expressive e presse t Of f rage and hatred murderous hope and terrified dread while they clash and thrust thru with their long Ions Ion swords as the tho masks which Grecian Gre Grecian Grecian cian actors wore to express greater frenzies of emotion than was possible possible ble blo to their bare barf visages Aa As the com combat combat combat bat proceeds slyly streaks his naked arm with red to look Jook like a cut and the spectators shiver Soon claps his hand full of crim crimson crims crimson son s n smear to his hip and a murmur of horror runs through the house Thus the antagonists wound each elCh other until both are arc bloodied thoroughly Then the lover gets a stab to the tho heart and writhes to death Now comes demonstration of ot Japanese dramatic art in a suicide by hy that is to say and I must say It to be descriptive though it may make malce you ou flinch as you read she places the point of ot a big knife against her abdomen slowly forces It in among amon her vitals and very lingeringly dies u a uIs aIs t Is the Japanese aristocrats privilege as you know to be his own executioner i when sentenced s d to death or when his i keen sense of honor calls for self slaughter slaught r and It Is said that usually no sooner does the blade puncture him that a friend stabs him to the heart thus shortening his ordeal There is no such elimination of ot torture in Hana Hapa kos Those who see it seem se m to lose sight of ot the fact that It Is and to view it as reality And indeed the imitation is wondrous wondrously ly y The actress uses a atrick atrick atrick trick knife the blade of ot which recedes Into the handle bandIe and at the same time elme releases a red fluid so that the illusion illusion illusion sion of ot a blade slowly slow piercing her body to a depth of six Ix Inches and of or blood spreading from the wound over her white while robe Is a grisly horror Every sec suc second I ond in three minutes that seem like ten brings a change of or grimace to the theae ac actress actress tress mobile little face from the tho first hudder shudder of or pain through the wry con contortions contortions of agony to the he final spasms of or Dissolution Yet some folks go from The Martyr to their usual atre supper k A ABy By the way wa and as to horrific thrills at the theatre the are hard put to it for new things to do It ItIs ItIs Itis Is forty years ears since Dion Dlan and Augustin Daly went to law with the question whether one of After Dark or the other in Under the Gaslight Gas Gaslight light had the right of ot originality to the scene of a hero bound to a railway track for tor a tL a train to run over but dragged away aw y in the nick of at time tune by a friend who has been kept a prisoner until the last ast moment possible to a p res rescue rescue rescue cue The of that situation has been strained till it is stretched to laxity lax laxIty laxIty Ity and no more can an it be made de to pull at an audiences heartstrings Joseph Arthur used it with fresh ingenuity in fn Blue Jeans twenty years later by b having the villain bind the hero on a machine which moved him along to towards towards wards a until the heroine broke out of at the mills office to save him Since that the playwrights have let vice put virtue under cotton presses stone breakers all manner of elevator cars until now you couldn t make an audience hold its breath over any possible pos possible possible sible peril of machinery Too many thousands of times havo have the endangered endangered endanger ger d chaps been rescued to permit of doubt In any possible case caseI I devoted a recent evening to a play which strove in vain to arouse a mob of an audience by fastening a man in inan inan inan an ore crusher and another evening went to waste at a play which endeavored endeavored endeavored ored to utilize the dramatic element of ot suspense by shutting a girl in an out outhouse outhouse house houle with a bomb under it and a fuse sizzling its way toward an explosion No sensations came to the assembly nor did anything to write much about come to me Everybody knew theres to be nobody hurt A little more effectual effectual c though Is the arousal and sus suspense suspense sus pense of ot interest in Through Death Valley vailey when a good young man Is tied toj to one stake a bad young younS rattlesnake rattle rattlesnake i snake to another and a fire is left to i burn away the cord so that I It seems sure to bite the noor Door fellow who then will be left to die miserably of the poison n The rattler is lifelike lIt lIke the fire is genuine the man is an elo eloquent eloquent eloquent quent complainer and the effect Is i such that no doubt we shall have aspell a aspell aspell spell of venomous reptiles in melodrama ma I In the lack of or any dramatic new thing to take off my m hat to toI toI I have sought in the English theatres for oddities with no more suc success success success cess than the above paragraphs indi indicate Indicate indicate cate I have visited one German and two Yiddish houses with no better luck But in an Italian theatre I hit o oa on ona ona n a melodramatic pancake which so to put It proved prove that the of Italy may be quite as hot stuff for the stage as the Yan Yankee Yankee Yankee kee flapjack The Theatre Roma i is s Just around a corner from the Bowery and has a stock company hardened to t three or four changes of bill bUl every ever y week ranging from Shakespeare to t plays patched together from the rag tags and bobtails of American melo melodramas m dramas The one which I encountered d bore a name In Italian equivalent t to Loot the Loot Let me digress t to tell that the drama takes take s its cues eues for titles from the r drama Girl has been a word to t conjure with ever since The Girl I I Left Behind Me was new 11 May I be reminiscent for a few lines I recall that thet when the Y was ready to turn in for the opening g of Charles first theatre thc tho th authors had not christened it Belasco Belasc o favored A Romance of at the because the scenes were among ou our r highest mountains His collaborator stood out for The Yellow Plume be belts belts its soldiers were feathered in that tha t color My Iy brother Daniel has inspirations in naming plays said Frohman Ill Il ask him for a suggestion So the manuscript was tas submitted to Daniel Frohman In one ono of or tho the dramas scenes the troopers at an army post sing the old soldiers song sonS of ot The Girl I Left Behind Me re in the serenade of ofa ofa ofa a visiting generals g daughter That sounds says she as though thou h each fellow fel tel fellow tellow low were singing his own love story the girl hes left behind him Now that bit of sentiment was extraneous yet Daniel Frohman seized on it for a catchy title and Charles Charl Frohman when the authors demurred that it pertinent replied My dear friends the printing presses are al already already ready read running on posters with The Girl I Left Behind Me Mo all over them What can I do doThe doThe The long IonS vogue of that drama in R America and Europe fixed Girl in ht inthe Inthe the eyes of authors and managers to work Into the t e titles of a hundred plays from extravaganzas to melodramas A newer catchword is Thief The Thief is a conspicuous piece In Broadway So this week we have Girl and Thief emblazoned on bill billboards billj billboards boards for the rude melodramas of The Thief Thier and the Girl The Girl the Banker and the Thief and A Girl Among Thieves besides The Burglar and nd the Lady From Sing SinS Sing to II Liberty Kid the Bandit and The uThe Robber and the th Maid lI ld The love of money taints the love of girls so much I in Ih stage fiction that thieves become heroes he heroes heroes roes All that by way wa of preface to Loot the Loot One day before I saw sa Loot the Loot at the Theatre Roma when the financial panic was at its height a motor mo motor motor tor car laden with bales of banknotes I was started from Wall street to the re relief relict relief lief of or a bank In Brooklyn Only the bank presidents son son accompanied the chauffeur for who would guess the nature na nn nature ture ure of the cargo carSo But the automo automobile automobile automobile bile blew up in the Italian quarter near i one of the bridges to Brooklyn a amob mob gathered in a twinkling and it took quick work by the police to save the exposed half million from being carried away Now see how the humble Italian ItalianI j theatre beat ut our American theatres I in a newsy use of that Incident Within hours It was being be InS copied co in Loot the Loot I suspect that the play was made up from several cur current current current rent melodramas df t eastern graft and western holdups It looked to me as as though bandits b figured in It I think that in the show the half million in the motor car was the villains vil lains ains loot of the savings bank which h he conducted and that the automobile was exploded by a bomb placed in it by the hero and that the mob com composed composed composed posed of ot defrauded depositors got away with the treasure That dramatization of an attempt to grab money mone in the street brings me back to George Ades newest study for the stage in slang The twelve young man in Artie goes sparking sp a girl who lives in an all house Surveyors come come through the cheap street with tapelines tape tapelines lines and tripods Wat VIat are you do doing doIng doing ing Artie asks We are going torun to torun torun run a clothesline through these back bak backyards backyards yards is the reply revly But the chap 1 works in a real estate office and he I guesses they are laying out the route rout e of a suburban railway He takes an I option to buy five thee of ot the houses an ansell and I Isell sell them at an advance to the company com company comI pany He t 10 to his name and the play sets forth how he contrives to lo loput I put un up a hundred as a token of good faith on one Saturday five hundred to w bind the bargain on the and eighteen thousand In full payment on the third sells out at thirty on on the tha th fourth and thus clears twelve to start married life with the girl I That is what links four Saturdays s in inthe inthe I Ithe the plot of this comedy and It is not enough I may ma as well own up right now to the reason why I have delayed to write about George Giorge Ades Ads Artie till tUl the second cond column of this letter It was reluctance to record the fact that the play is a fiasco in fun fen fanin in so far as tickling New York audiences audi audiences I Is concerned by a humorist who Wh w time and again has made them laugh tremendously It is not easy to tell I why Artie dropped Into Broad Broadway Broadway Broadway way popularity He talks in glib slang with a few new idioms among the old ones yet he spellbind us with the Ade colloquial diction as at others have done He is an embodiment of q audacity and a ready liar such as lia has been oft admired on the stage yet Jet his hi B |