Show Gotham Hears Indifferent Plays BY FRANKLIN FYLES New Nev York May 4 It ought to be betrue betrue betrue true that men who have been many years on the stage who have had am amIe ample ampie pie Ie opportunity to learn learn the tricks of their heir trade and who have no excuse for being ignorant of theatric craft are able to h t put together effectual plays I r dont say they should be expected to write good literature that is not in included included eluded in the accomplishments of their calling but should they lack judgment as to what will willand and what wont interest audiences Four plays by actors are the weeks output of ot new theatrical material In New York I would be sorry if it were my duty to award a leather eather medal to the worst of them for the decision would be very hard to tomake tomake tomake make and the only way out of the dif dir would be to cut the prize into quarters so that it might be distributed impartially for equal worthlessness Two of these plays are presented at theatres bearing the names of and Daly and still are temples of dra dramatic dramatic matic art yet The District Leader and ind Cousin Louisa are so devoid of merit as the less pretentious Mon Men Montana Mentana tana and The Man of Her Choice But If compelled to give the leather medal to one of the four thorn hors I would hand it to Frederick Fre Paulding because he is a superfine actor who began thirty years ago with an astonishing similarity to Edwin Booth in the Booth repertory has had hada a great amount of experience as a di director director director rector of stock companies in hundreds of plays and therefore has a special claim clam on the th booby prize for Cousin Louisa although that is the least bad among the four maladroit compositions The only tolerable new thing in it Is Mary Van Buren a surely sur ly beautiful and probably clever actress but I 1 cant be sure about her ability for she has never been on a New York stage be before before before fore and the character in which she is introduced would defy Bernhardt and Rejane if it they were one composite actress to do anything with its emo emotion emotion emotion tion or its jocularity Cousin Louisa is both a grass widow and a n sod widow separated by divorce from Crom her first husband and by death from her second The one bequeathed three millions to her on condition that she shall shaH not remarry within a year vear he and arid the one become lovers again but he dis disdains dIsdains dains dams the wealth of his successor and predecessor and wont wed the grass sod widow while she keeps It ft But no little thing like that baffles barnes her renewed ardor She times the marriage In the forenoon because the year ear of tion TV will ill expire by the afternoon so o as asto asto asto to deprive herself of the three mil mU millions mIllions lions and qualify herself as a penniless bride That is put forward In all seri serf seriousness seriousness as the deeply emotional ele element element element ment of the play Five other millions are involved in inthe inthe Inthe the complications that are meant to tobe tobe tobe I be jocular They have been entrusted to Louisa for apportionment among five of her dead husbands relatives In ac accordance accordance accordance with her own estimate of those persons worthiness Stage money is so plentiful in the foolery of farces that probably no playwright could make it seem to much account in the sedate half hall of a comedy But an old like Paulding Pauldin have failed to assemble a lot of funny funn things for or Louise and the five possible heirs to do while she without her identity being suspected makes a vis vist t of In Inspection Inspection Inspection in their household and fools i them into betrayals of or their virtues and vices Details are needless The fall fail failure I ure is told by b r writing that the audi audience audience ence laughed but not often oft n at what was Yas I meant to be laughable Joseph E Howard wrote not only the words of The District Leader but also the music and he acted in it too It is a guess that he served in a fourth capacity that of the plays plas financier But this could not be accused of hugging his own material The evening was half hall done before a tall well vell dressed man strolled into view If Mr Howards friends in the audience had hadnot hadnot hadnot not identified him with applause strangers have known that the six feet of man that grew grev straight up from a pair of spats was more than merely one in the stage crowd It was almost at the end of his play that he gave himself some something something something thing to do The scene was wa Union square with autumnal foliage in front skyscraping buildings behind and Mr lIr Howard among the loungers on the park benches He slipped casually and agreeably into such a song as a he is noted for making It was about a aBig Big Banshee and he sang it with a Chaun Chauncey Chaunce Chauncey cey ce Olcott brogue Presently he was still sUlI more like Olcott with a little child wound around his neck So short was The District Leader that although it started after eight thirty It was all over by with the theatre closed up and the ref refugees refugees ues removed to safety safet Announce Announcements Announcements Announcements ments had said that Mr Howard in intended intended intended tended to revive the Harrigan and Hart form of entertainment but it would have been truer to say that he was cutting and fitting on the George Cohan pattern With a Tom Lewis sort of unknown a scene in China Chinatown Chinatown Chinatown town a melodramatic plot and a man manner manner ner ncr of ot song and chorus interpolations The District Leader was like e a mis misguided misguided misguided guided dress rehearsal of or Little John Johnny Johnny Johnny ny Jones fault of ting was copied and aggravated so badly that Howard alone can know what the piece is about and may be behe beh he h Things began to happen in an up town hotel ther the night before an election A political conspiracy was prepared and a disguised newspaper reporter partially frustrated it An elaborately adventuress popped lOpped up with the assertion that she had been married and deserted two years be before before before fore by a Tammany candidate for tor of office office fice flee On second thought I apologize for calling the lady an adventuress Only her clothes were adventurous She had a scheming look but It turned out that she really had mislaid a hus bus husband band barid in Denver and he resembled the fair and square politician so closely being in point of fact his and morally astray brother that the same actor did for them both The play was wasso wasso wasso so very bad that there is no call to Describe it further But Howard knows how to turn off ote lively graceful Infectious tunes and he has put half a dozen of his best into the play They affect his claim claimon on the leather medal as an matist but they the did make the audience sorry that there were not a full dozen of them A song and chorus of the strolling class called A Heart to Let was caught and carried away by b its hearers and another made them cher oher cherish cherish ish the memory of eight lively girls whom it displayed I like to find at least one odd dd Idea In ever so bad b d a play In this case it consisted of four scrub scrubwomen scrUbwomen scrubwomen women who after the th politicians quit the hotel brought In pails and brushes dropped on their knees to the footlights and cleaned the floor They were not chorus girls thinly disguised but an actual transfer from the thea tres ires force of a triumph In Realism an of musical farce I ITo To see s e the third of the actors plays I las lasIt it was necessary to go to a theatre I which the millionaire named the Murray Hill indicative of swell dom dam but they located It so s close to the border line between Murray urray Hill Hilland Hilland and the populous Hellgate section that after several tenants had tried In vain to make it pay with plays appealing to Murray it is now thriving with stuff to the liking of But it was in the air ait probably blown there thereby the thereby e eby by a press agent that The Man Ma of Her Choice was out of the common run and extraordinary by means of ota a thrilling marvel While waiting for that excitement I saw that a poor and pure young man was vas in requited love with a fair and fond heiress that a vile and vicious scoundrel was a rival rl al suitor that the V and V fellow plundered the F 13 and F girls fathers safe and fastened the crime on the P and P chap that up to the middle of the play not the faintest ray of ot originality gleamed In the atmosphere which Sim Simmons Simmons mons ions had created for this melo melodrama melodrama melodrama drama it seems as though an actor tor when he makes a play would for tor his own selfish sake If it not for his audi audiences audiences audiences satisfaction to relieve himself if not others from the tedious monotony of melodrama cut the hounded hero and his loyally suffering out of the plot also the hounding vil vii villain villain lain and his jealous mistress and nd pro provide provide provide vide original substitutes or else throw up the job It Is a mistake to believe beli ye that the sameness Is good because it Is time tried and therefore sure The sure thing about it Is i that the th audience even If a rabble will laugh at those familiar situations There is one uner unerring unerring unerring ring test by which to tell that sort of if ifan an audiences interest in Ina a sentimental affair If the gallery laughs when wh n the lovers kiss you ou may be b sure ure that the sorrows of those lovers lo ers have won no sympathy This time not alone the gallery but the parquet too was set laughing by the th smack Now for the novelty that wis to lift The Man of 01 Her Choice out of com corn commonplace commonplace and carry It into distinction The villain threw a lamp amp at nt t his disobedient disobedient mistress m tress her flat caught fire fi e and the hero h ro rescued her h r from death In Inthe Inthe Inthe the next scene she was In Bellevue hos lies hospital hospital pital and likely to die of her burns She had the stolen bonds under her pillow The villain choked her to get them and was thrown out by the hero to whom she gave the fateful papers But if ie she were to die without telling how he had come by them he would be convicted as a a thief dont you see and the physician said she probably would Her only chance of life he re remarks remarks remarks marks is in grafting skin from some other person on the place where her own is burnt away awa But who would submit to torture for this friendless creature f fI I r will cries the heroine The surgeon lays out his Implements Two nurses bring lint and bandages The unconscious patient lies on a cot with her sore side showing red through her thin robe You will take an anaesthetic says the surgeon to the heroine No the brave girl replies I will wil 11 bear the pain for the man of my The logic of that is shaky shak but the theatrical reason r ason is sound for If she consciously tortured where will wil wilbe willbe willbe be the dramatic value of the scene I It looks well for the play Then sud suddenly suddenly suddenly denly it does not The author has go got himself himsel into a dilemma that he can cant get out of The girl resolutely strips strip off the waist of her dress strikes a pose of desperate courage and says u am ready Now everyone knows that thai being a fashionable belle belie she wouldn be blemished by so much as a vaccina vaccination vaccination vaccination tion mark anywhere that a gown would show so long as she had other places for it yet she stretches out her arm to have some skin cut off and it is a very pretty arm to sen sea sentence tence tenc to solitary confinement In a sleeve for life lire for a good deed O Of course It is too much to expect her t to uncover a hip or the small of her back backwith backwith backwith with the whole side of the hospital ware ward open to a theatre full of spectators I dont know that they want her to Yet Ye something as remarkable as that i is needed to save the situation The girl gir girin girlin girlin in a corset cover ceases to be melo inelo melodramatic melodramatic dramatic the tension relaxes the grip lets go and the climax falls to pieces It is of no use that the surgeon plies pile his scalpel and pincers or that the suf sufferer sufferer ferer ferel writhes in pain or that her arm armis armis armIs is copiously bloodied The audience audiene laughs as the curtain goes down Play Pla making is a difficult trade There was a misunderstanding about Montana the fourth of the actors plays Augustus Thomas lives In New Rochelle and that suburban village knows him well to be the author of Arizona Colorado Alabama and andIn andIn andIn In Mizzoura l and when hen Montana fontana was announced for a trial performance in New R chelles theatre its name gave the idea that It was a new piece by Thomas That was w s what I found out when on looking the house over I asked why two hundred of the fash fashionable folk of or New Rochelle were In Inthe inthe Inthe the same audience with the rabble that usually gathers there of a Saturday night to see a melodrama The name of Harry D Carey Car y was down in the bill as that of the author but It might be a nom de plume Thomas is ordinarily ordinarily ordinarily in sight at his plays first nights but at this time he was known to be beIn bein beIn In Europe It was not until Mon Montana Montana Montana tana was well under way wa and its quality noted that the actor of its cowboy hero Harry D Carey was ful fully fully ly Identified as its writer He must 1 have been told of the blunder for he seemed nervously apprehensive and I when he was called before the curtain at the end of an act in which he narrowly escaped lynching by a mob he appeared to doubt that he was yet safe from having ha ving something vengeful done to him He was scared by his au audience audience audience Recall the story commonest In the cowboy plays you have seen and you will wUl hit on the one told in Montana Cowboy foreman on cattle ranch loves daughter so does cowboy cat cattle cattle cattie tle tie thief thier good cowboy accuses bad cowboy but gets g ts charged with crime I himself courageous sweetheart saves I him from re rc Ie e villain breaks i promise to marry mistress and she turns on him he throws her in old 1 mine and hero rescues her so she can expose villains guilt Besides being the same plot that has been In scores of western prairie melodramas it is isas isas Isas as you see identical with that of The TheMan Man Ifan of Her Choice and arid hundreds of New York City melodramas I wish I were Its original author and the copyright run out so that I might collect royalties for its use Mr Careys Carey a Montana girl lost no skin like Mr The worst of ot other her torture was to be kissed by the ugly villain v That Th t was waa wa the plays only novelty The Th hero was In ili jail Sail The heroine tried to comfort nt him with her Ups lips through the bars of the door that separated them It be done Then the villain picked her het up held her ler in his arms and kissed her very hard Indeed How do you ou like that he asked not noto of her h r but of ot the hero The hero liked it no why way w y It hurt hIm ilm dreadfully He was iras more thore cut up about It than the girl m In fIt The Man of Her Choice was when the surgeon sliced cuticle from her arm She grImaced and bore It He yelled bloody loody murder |