Show IRVING A AND MANSFIELD ALIKE Ir L BY F FRANKLIN FYLES New Y York March larch Richard Mans Mansfield field Is Americas Henry Irving In ways way than that unorIginal re fe mar iIan strong Individuality In f like Irvings is never hid hidden hidden den In n his stage assumptions yet his versatility enables hint fm to m make ke ST great eat differences among the nine character or of a fortnights ts visit The new one me here is the soldierly Don Carlos In vivid contrast contra t with say the foppish Beau Brummell and the grotesque Mr Hyde Mansfield Is likE IrvIng In mak Ing choice or of literary plays and pro producing producing them with dramatic art lUt Also like IrvIng in the that there were people who wanted better theatrical amusement than most of that which they were getting and an that hat he be was the theman theman man to give It to them And again he is Hk like Irving in paying a larger t salary to a press agent than to any J member of hIs acting company Irving Irv Irving ing never changed that aid nor as yet has Mansfield during years of real and pretended The story of Mansfields first dis distinction as Baron Barof after the part had been declined at r rehearsal by John H Sto Stoddart is not too old od to get getan getan an addition by Maude Harrison upon pon seeing him him anew in A Parisian Ro Romance nt mance nce It was the supper scene sa me at the first performance by the Palmer stock com eom company pany said Miss Harrison and I as the dancIng girl sat beside the aged profligate Mansfield rehearsed much and nd so when I saw that he was captivating the audience I whispered per g gen en for his big death scene was Vas just ahead hitting em emMr emMr Mr Mansfield what Im here for he re replied plied T Then n r I felt that at 1 Mansfield ansfield would nev never r need any patting on the back 3 1 hes be able amle to pat himself Mansfields resolute and confident undertaking un to place himself in dramatic authority Is shown at its full fuU achieve achievement ment In his production of Don Car Carlos los Whet what re reader der of literary play has expected to see It performed in English What actor other than Mansfield now that Irving Is 19 dead could put It on the stage handsomely hand handsomely without serious loss Joss of money and nd pOI popularity The achievement as made in Chicago months ago was so widely reported that an account of it itI r I as repeated iq in Now New York is not needed I It is after all a mere addition to 1 the Mansfield repertory and will be used but tour four times Umes during his hh en enI engagement I here Nor does it attract the Mansfield public with all Its satis satisfaction faction of curiosity equally with some of the plays old in his list Not for forDon Don uDon Carlos but for The Scarlet Letter was the advance sale of seats largest with Dr J and Mr Hyde second and Beau Brummel third One of Mansfields rewards for taking up plays it Is odd to note comes In dollars at the rate of five hundred undred and upwards per week that he does not pay to authors Not one of his nine pieces calls royalty Like the beloved Joseph Jefferson Jef Jefferson ferson who never paid a cent of roy royalty royalty alty In n his life Ufe the admirable Rich Richard Richard ard Mansfield eld cannot be regarded as a patron of dramatic authorship Iv Ivy Ashton Root avoided making herself known to New York first and solely 8 as the author of The Greater Love the only seriously Intended drama of the week by having it men mentioned mentioned In the preliminary announce announcements announcements ments that she Is a niece of Elihu Root secretary of state And there was vas no Of the fact that Shatter Shafter Howard author of the weeks musical farce His Majesty is a gentleman of wealth Yealth and leisure who has expended some of both In n the ven ture Thus ThU the prod coons bg lad a tarn tain interest as exploIting amateurs or of social standing And for the same rea reason reason son not much was expected or of them So there Is little The error that Mrs Root fell teU into is ia one that to give r recent cent instances has been committed by y such veteran V ter n playwrights as Augustus ThOmas Madeleine Lucette Ryley and Paul Potter T The e Greater Love Is a drama about Mozarta form of misguided composition that results from emotion emotional al reading of Incidents in the Lives of Great Artists Usually It Is a poet who is torn from the pages of fact ful encyclopedias and anecdotal biographies biographies curried of his sins and groomed with morality and sentimental representation representation In that case he Is made to glibly extemporize r I could not love time Uree dear so muCh loved I not honor more mora to his daughter or or bursting forth with The light th that t lies Hes In womans eyes for a theatrIc exit The lIfe of Mozart was overhung with witha a that makes a haze of mystery and a distance But Mrs Root accentuates the musi musicians clans own fault of fluctuating his af affections f factions amongst several young woven women and although Inconstancy in love may maybe maybe be a forgivable fault In real life Ufe It Is fatal always in a Dla play Mozart as written by the niece of Secretary Root and acted by nary r rY Kyle Dallas son Howard Kyle lacks Jacks every quality necessary necessary essary to the respect ct of an audience including manly strength and resolution resolution tion in personal conduct besides loyal loyalty loyalty ty in love As to whether Mozart is illegally gUy libeled the opinion o of Secre Secretary tary Root would be The mystic and musical Mozart Is shown in the play as the shifting lover of the three Weber sisters historically associated with his life Ufe and an indefinite nite figure known as La whose favorite i is the familiar one in rushing in on en the first night ot of an opera taking UP a great role that the prepared prima donna has thrown down and carrying it to tro tre tremendous success W What M a boon she would be to Herr Conned Conried in these Nordica and Calve days das After two first devoted to details of In n the Weber house household household hold ane and the th second to illustration of biographical anecdotes clumsily question of which really is the greater love Is reached Alo Aloysia sia Weber from whom Mozart is credited by his biographers with a true and hopeless love has here scorned him In hIs waning fortunes and so to put i it deserted the independents for a bigger salary and better bookings with the syndicate That concern is after La the great Johnn prima donna That is the situation with the fact of Mozart having really married the good Constanze Weber left out of the story The passionate Is brought to the front center bursting with love for Mozart and pursued by bya a symbolical l figure of the syndicate in inthe inthe the person of who wrote the libretto of The Magic Flute and therefore is presented as a villain who have endeavored to follow the Flute plot of birds of plumage and queens of night will not dispute this estimate of Mozart and discuss their mighty love in fevered terms and they conclude that the greater love loe tran transcends transcends the emotion aroused in n the Mo Mozart Mozart heart by the housewifely excel excellence excellence lence of sentimental post postUre posture Ure or problem that has Incited Ibsen Hauptmann and other dis distinguished distinguished Europeans to write one to sL six dramas apiece They have dIs dIscussed discussed cussed the subject more than sirs Irs Root The lady makes Mo Mozart Io decide that his greater love is far too holy to indulge and that any concession to It would so consume his soul and body that naught would be left fo his music At the of M this sc seen carri carried q to som success ce by Mrs Mr Root s sincere writing and nd Beverley acting Mozart turns to the composing of iem ma mass s which he felt to be a warning of his own death But the historical al count who paid an advance sum on the order is here supplanted by y a heavenly call A Avo vo voice e from somewhere commands him to compose death music lc The effectuality of the fourth act Is not due to anything dramatic In the tho showing ot of dp pv poverty and mis misery ery for th that t Is s t the e nUon 1 and unappealing of genius warded but to a finely faithful reproduction reproduction or of painting of the composer singing his last requiem Mrs Roots R good taste runs t through her play and I suppose Howard Kyles dramatic art Is responsible le also for this staging or of a great picture The shadowed details of the room suggest suggested ed and not obtruded the correctlY tint tinted tinted ed costumes of the figures that slowly t ke the poses of the group and the singing by the assembled qu quartette r to the accompaniment of a harps it is a JOY for artistic eyes eres and and ears e 4 Time Is cruel when along with years it adds dds fat to an actress an and it be fiendish if it expands the ness of Anna Laughlin into obesity A fondly solicitous study of Anna in His Majesty the weeks musical farce rouses a dread that a few years hence she may be half h a as wide as s she Is longa physical possibility as her length lacks inches of f being eln five feet Anna is not as clever as Blanche Ring the other other actress put mf into this show Its N New w York Introduction but as a pithy pitsy she takes fin first t place away from Blanche Blanch as a 1 ChiCago grass widow w That should not be so and it is due to the fact that An Ann Anna n na can get along with nothing but ut her own baby googoo while Blanche re requires requires quires sub substantial material to go on New York is told that His Majesty ty has been made over since Its month in Philadelphia I wont vont be believe believe lieve It is any better than It was w for forI I cant believe it can have been any worse than it is An n act of George Bernard Shaws Man and Superman as published d but not a as performed sent its characters to hell under sen sentEnce tEnce of living there exactly as they had lived on earth Shafter Howard may rhay have thought that portion of the Shaw comedy too good to be lost to the stage That is a guess based on Howards locating of the first act ot of His i Maest j in hell with the arrival of a theatrical company and others di direct direct from a railway wreck The col collaborating collaborating genIus of Meilhac Halevy and Offenbach was tested by the task in their Orpheus and Eurydice of making the place of torture a place ot of gayety In incidents and music It is no wonder that Howard amateur hu humorist and musician able tot to equal the wor work of the one Englishman to say nothing of the combined three Frenchmen After Howards prisoners to Satan have blown themselves up with dy dynamite dynamite from a sulphurous rous cavern to a island he repudiates them In the new new version of his play for he says that his story has been taken out and a lot of stuff put in Dick Carroll Harry Kelly Knute Erickson and Hughey Flaherty song and dance comedians whom no gentleman could be expected to nod to much less write with Probably Blanche Ring has an n opInion of them too for they have taken care of them themselves themselves selves and done nothing for her Blanche is of no use whatever without songs that she can characterize as aswell aswell well as sing and nd lacking any such she puts in one of Edna Mays one of Fay Templeton and one 9 her ner own ownA ownA A snowstorm raged on the opening night and Its chill chiJI seemed to penetrate to his satanic supposedly superheated pit nit If hell had frozen over oyer and the actors were skating on thin ice likely to break they couldn t have been stiffer with the frost of fright ot of the fright of of a frost They mf might have known that a friendly au audience u things at them yet they seemed ever Alert to dodge missiles Probably a snicker of con contempt contempt tempt or a a laugh ot of derision n hits an actor harder and hurts worse than a rotten egg or a decayed cabba cabbage e eThe The only person on the stage stag t that at showed no apprehension was t there re reThe The island scene Is a beautiful shore with a sea stretching far away and when the curtain rl rises a 4 boy am and a girl stand with t their backs to the a audience dl nce and t their eJr faces to the eJ expanse e Q of water in imitation of the picture familiarly underlined What are the wild waves saying Those children come forward to jean ten others other In a gambol but an opened umbrella with two feet stick sticking sticking ing out from rider it Is left on a sand dune The feet are bare so are the ankles and their shapely smallness in indicate indicate that they belong to a girl What will be the surprise when we see her wm Will she have on a bathing suit it that denudes her shockingly How many of us hope so After Atter a while a comedian lifts the umbrella Dangling from It are a pair of st stuffed shoes and stock tags In these days of theatrical trade versus dramatic profession plays spring fr from m business instinct oftener than artistic Inspiration To UJ illustrate strate Very like likely y the namee of Harry Lehr and Melville Ellis mean nothing to you Lehr became came Mrs cotillion leader and society Clown while getting a living as a wIne agent t and H thus booming the sale of his brand of champagne he won the big prize of an anAstor anAstor Astor set belle for a wife Ellis Is a musician and actor who r resembles Lehr closely They are light blondes blond with regular features hair that d girls might enVY for its yellow and pink ch cheeks eks that dimple prettily when they smile They would seem girlish but for a saving manliness of manner Ellis may have bave said to himself lilt if L hrs individuality captivated ted tee smart set cant I project mine ef effectually across the footlights to en audience We have him this we week l lin in a monolo monologue 13 at one of the politer vaudeville theatres He does nothing that be done as well by a doz dozen en actors to be found any afternoon in ina ina a round Of the Players Greenroom and Lambs clubs yet hardly one of th them m could entertain with inconsequential materIal as he does He saunters on 01 the stage as Lehr does into a parlor nods and smiles now how are you and r marks as though to friends If y stand it ft Ill sing and playa play a H He sits at a piano Diano and recites rather than thail sings about a a slick fellow wh thrives without any income and who whoa refrain Is Oh Jm Im a damned smart A second song Is made UP J f WOn p ls gossip at an afternoon tea Neat N ext l l t tasks asks the audience to name five s sand and from them he makes ai aal operatic by mixing selections fram them with popular tunes of the day Finally he sings a humorously senti sentimental sentimental mental ballad of things that happen tn when love is young oung All U of th the monologue would fall flat it if Ellis ware not like Lehr a born charmer WhY when his limit of time is passe passel 1 rand ish women in the spat their gloves for more and boys in th the ga galery galery lery are yelling Now for the point that I haY have bet aiming atthe alertness of theatrical managers to get goods thi tha wiil sell seIJA sellA A drama of New York so is In preparation at a principal One of Its characters is a carpet kni knight ht at ata a cotillion tournament nt no make him HarrY Lehr and have him hen played by Melville Ellis sail tl ne e stage director after seeing Ellis lu du of Lehr Sure saU th the manager The It matter What hat he said The upshot is that Le hr r wont get to nor Els Elsin In vaudeville but may In the play proves to be goods that will salt |