| Show U Lr OPENING NIGHTS N IGHT S IN GOTHAM GOTHAN BY FRANKLIN FYLES RI YORK YORE Sept 15 This is the I 1 matrimonial problem presented In Mary and John by Edith Ellis Baker John is willing to give to lila ills wife all the th money she elm cares to spend but he that a husbands dig dignity of at dominance demands that she ask for it Marys idea is that to todo todo do that is humiliating beggary In that form forni time the money question comes up be between between tween a doting man mami and his fond bride and sends them apart Mary goes back to the studio which she abandoned for wedlock mind and tries to earn a living but she finds out that the pictures she used to sell were bought either by her father under cover or by a Ubertino with an anevil anevil evil purpose and that sue she has no war mar marketable talent John pursues tier her lov br lovingly and she returns home wIth him The money question Oh he lie tells her that he has opened a bank account In her name but she learn of it until after she has lias surrendered herself to his hia welcoming arms and so the way may be regarded as inconclusive a theme so slight as that a quite purposeful comedy depends for interest because Mrs Baker has not sufficient wit or humor into time the sentiment of her har play to render It amusing Yet it presents B a point of common marital disagreement in a way to get time the attention of Minnie Maddern Fiske to the tho manuscript I mention Mrs Fiske as an embodiment of the in intelligence to which Mrs Baker appeals because lie her husband Harrison Gray Flake Fiske gave the facilities of his thea theatre theatre tre for the production But blase Broadway was less considerate of the simple composition Hardly any of the habitual excepting the principal newspaper critics went to that opening Time The whole Tenderloin contingent gave the evening to Nat Wills and Time The Duke of Duluth fur for there was no other Monday recourse as George Ades Time The Bad Samaritan was held over till Tuesday They wilt will rush to the Flake Fiske house pell mell when Mme appears in Monna Van Vanna Vanan na an and again to see Mrs Fiske in What Will People Say A stage show has bias to be strong compulsory ir irresistible irresistible resistible the wont look at it Mary and John is too for them to give their time to I Those New York who ho like to live up to their name pame theatrically by never missing this the first night of a must musi musical cal frivolity but dine rather too well to be able to sit through a serious play went far enough from their beaten track to see Time The Duke of Duluth But they took the spirit of Broadway with them and it may be said aid that The Duke was up against the most difficult cult audience it will ever suffer Broadway argued that the Sam Marion who nuts on the Weber burlesques in inthe inthe the war wa it likes them and the George Broadhurst who Ig 1 a good fellow of the tho Lambs club and the author of many excellent farces would surely serve sene something to settle pleasantly on the and chartreuse of dinner But Broadway take into consid consideration that Marion and were working for the more easily pleased less Jaded audiences of the cut rate theatres and so puffed up with pink sauces as they were sneered encored at a ashow show that really succeeded in what it aimed at What do you think at tills this late day of ofa ofa a comic king who hums has been advised by his high priest that a messenger from heaven is about to fall into the hard hurd hardluck luck palace relieve all the royal trou troubles bles be promised the hand of the beau beautiful soprano princess and when she secretly weds the naval ten tenor tenor or has the grotesque comedy aunt forced upon him Does pos possible possible sible In imi 1905 Of course there Is the probability of this being burlesque of a burlesque In these days of Bernard Shaw have to be right spry SPi not to trip up on their own wisdom Nat Wills as a hobo from frow Duluth who is for comic opera reasons cre created created duke of that city looked like Wil Willie Willie lie K I Vanderbilt Jr in need of a shave That was in his fourth change of costume when lie wore a jaunty walking suit with a silk hat and a with cane His costume was the tip of fashion excepting that It was wan a bright green but that was to match tIme the other costumes whose wear wearers ers era had assembled for a finale march song with time the word strenuous lag ing from time to time above the drums of the swinging music by Max Witt which made the end of the first act lively and tuneful You may many remember Wills in vaude vaudeville nub ville as a tramp singer of parodies No Noone Noone one could know that that was the ex cx extent tent of his ability until this attempt to tobe tobe be an aim extravaganza comedian When ha lie returned to his specialty near the end of the play he ho was as amusing as ever First ho lie distorted the tho sentiment of in the Shade Shado of at the tho Old Apple AppleTree AppleTree Tree to a ditty about a couple who sat beneath it in Iii an aim overripe season when rotten fruit kept falling unromantically on oil their love making Then Wills sang a rearrangement of the tho Florodora in which he lie wits was both the gentle stranger and the pretty maiden When Interest might have waned ne ie called patriotism anti and Roosevelt to tu hiS nis aid and got cheers That song had the refrain G O 0 P used with often ludicrous disregard for forthe forthe the sentiment of time the versos verses mind and it ft had hada a movement anti andr spirit and an easily caught tune tuno that might make it a cam campaign campaign song A tt racy American humorist able to put his funny stuff into actable plays play can a kind of fame famo that brings fortune Artemus Ward turn the trick nor Bill Nye Nyc although both tried hard nor even Mark Twain al although although though tour four of his books have been handled effectually by stage experts Charles H Hoyt had the tho knack of it and cashed it heavily George Ade Ad is playing the game better than Hoyt did His stagecraft is as clover his hia humor Is more wholesome and ho lie can turn turnout turnout out three or four plays in the time that Hoyt spent on one In just about that ratio he lie wilt will ge richer unless like Hoyt be works ten tan hours a day plays ton ten anti and well the four others But this funny man Is a ii business businessman man He wrote the libretto of Time The Sultan of Sulu for ono one and ana a half per percent percent cent of the gross receipts because the composer of an extravaganzas score has to be paid too and the expenses of producing and continuing such shows are so heavy that the writers royal royalties royalties ties are squeezed small Ade saw that comedy would pay better if only his fun could get along without singing and dancing anti and he made an experiment ment with Th The College Widow that removed all doubt I seen his iii contract for The Bad Samaritan but It Should give him 5 per cent of the first four or oy five thousand dollars taken in lii each week 10 per cent of the next two or thousand and 15 to 20 per percent percent cent of the higher thousands It is probable that his income from this play will be a thousand a week in time tho big cities during time the first season Lucky chap Yos m Having been born bom with the gift of humor and the common commonsense commonsense sense to market it advantageously but not In the sense of having by chance bought a winning ticket In the lottery of fortune Time The goose that lays bays golden eggs egga for Ade Me nests in Ades The Bad Samaritan was in Wash Washington Washington ington a week before corning coming to New NewYork NewYork York and the news newe of it has carried through time the country the fact that it perverts the parable of the good Sa Samaritan a maritan by making a benevolent mans acts look like evil deeds The original title was His Second Time on Earth suggested by the return of the Samar old man after obscure retire retirement meat ment to the activities of business life The Tho humor of the play has Ims a satirical twist for the lesson if there la Is one is that the most popular thing a nina man can do is to give away his money But this misconstrued character Is not a astar astar star part he crowd the others and the audience gets a chance to be lift become come acquainted with each typical American introduced Uncle Ike Grid Gridley Icy ley the old aId chap who takes a new whack at city life and is acted by Richard Golden himself a to Broadway after years of absence on he the crossroads Is no clearer a type than the studious youth who sets out to bo be boa bea a horse doctor and ends as a horse race bookmaker the lawyer who in incites incites cites litigation for time the fees sake the girl who is pent lent on being a prima don ilon donna na or the cook who wins by hi getting into his heart by time the way of his stomach We are getting Ades On His Up also a vaudeville sketch in slang and they say that he wrote it kindly tot for Fred Lennox an actor never neverin in the condition mentioned in time the title yet sometimes pretty close to it Not that Ado Ade made mads a gift of it to hits his friend but that he broke his rule not to put any of his work into the tho variety shows show It have taken him more than half hatt a day td tO turn it off for it Is the theold theold old idea of a 0 fellow ap appearing appearing at the tho residence of a wealthy widow as a parlor entertainer and dis discovering discovering covering In her imer a U bygone sweetheart ready to marry him That comes out in a dialogue that is formless as a play but amusing because the man to whom the change of luck comes once a race racehorse racehorse horse owner talks in the idiom of the therace race track anti ami the pool pooh room and Len Lennox nox speaks It as though he used no other hi iii private life He is a comedian his costume is an evening suit his hostess is a beautiful woman of the smart society type and the politeness of time the manners makes the slang all time the themore more effectively funny In the same bill Is a sketch in which a grimy ragged tramp of the fixed 11 ed stage variety intrudes himself in the unvarying stages stage way upon a lady and amid of course she is a singing and dancing soubrette as coarse as he though clean of skin and raiment and ana she sho blackened her teeth like hike him to stimulate repulsive toothless ness I am sorry to report that the audience liked that couple as much aa as asit it did Ados Of the tho new plays launched on the theatrical seasons was expected to float more buoyantly than and the tho Barge for It sailed a year in England and Nat Goodwin to be the barges captain on Us its American voyage Yet Yot it sinks Rinks at its wharf in New York and will not go hence to any other port This craft built for our waters A freight scow on the tho Thames is bossed by an au anold old fellow as a as Captain Cuttle as amorous as Don Juan and andas andas as boastful as Baron says saya Captain Barley when ho be finds himself complicated with witha a barmaid and a ladys maid amid what me inc I dont mean no arm but Im too Now it in Good Goodwin Goodwin win to say to himself on seeing Cyril Maude make Londoners laugh at Bar Barley hey ley I can play him as well as that for New Yorkers But ha Its was foolish to think that the tha soggy humor of Thames waterman anti ami their muddy ways would be entertaining to people who know nothing of them Besides having a theme quito quite hopeless for American purposes the play made b li Louis Napoleon Parker from W TV W Jacobs stories has not A 5 glint of wit or a gleam of sentiment And the as assistant comedians brought with it train from time tho Strand are aro an insult to BrOadway intelligence We in the tho first audience who hind had years and years ago seen Goodwins Captain in a burlesque 01 of 4 Susan when ho squeaked and In funny imitation of Stu Stuart Stuart art Robson and too proud to sing and dance while gi giving ing aa as salty a delineation of the old seadog as William WilliamJ J 3 Florence used to of when we recalled that performance we ached to tt see the tha cleverest of American mimics mimic cut loose from his role in Beauty and the Barge and be as funny as we knew he lie could But he lie stuck to his task legitimately through the audiences change of manner from expectancy through apathy to resentment How he felt about it no one could discern whether sorry or angry but when the time came for the usual speech and it was called cabled for he ho say a word I have havo heard that he lie can be very vary pro profanely profanely eloquent If he lie had bad spoken right out from his heart his speech might have made dramatic history In many a play tIme the leading actress assumes several characters but iu In one of the new comedies Time The Prince Prine Chap we have the novelty of a role requiring three actresses Time The heroine grows as the action progresses and only an elastic lady from time the museums could contract and expand to fit the ie ye Claudia starts as am a child of 5 left by her mother a model mode to th tim care of a poor artist He would shirk the charge but cant resist the little toddler when she gently forces paternal duties upon him The getting of a supper for her time the undressing of her herfor herfor for the night the hearing bearing of her In Ingenuous ingenuous prayer dad and the putting of her herto herto to sleep sheep with a fairy story make you feel like a spy upon an intimate home incident The he tale he tells is about hi his own love of a Princess Princes Alice far faraway faraway away from this London loft in time the city of New York He Ho makes Alice a prin princess princess cess to this nodding little Claudia foi fomIn in lila his Alice Is a princess to him And he lie tells it well for the tho actor is that Cyril Scott who deserted from comedy ten years ago to go into extravaganza arid and now comes back backIs Is this timis man who loves her so a prince asks time the sleepy child Oh a sort of a prince chap the theartist theartist artist replies Nothing in the many new plays of time the past fortnight is so insinuating lr in its charm or so touching in its appeal as this scene of the lone little Claudia and the lonely artist Time The child gets Into our hearts when we see her again three years later and we are sorry fo to her bier jealousy of the Princess Alice who lio comes to Prince Clump Chap at last Alice Is jealous too for she wont b be that he is not time the father of the child he be cares for so tenderly and amid in iii pique she goes away and marries an ap another other man Thus has Edward written of lila his play delight delightfully delightfully fully but in time the final third wherein the widowed Alice returns willing t te marry Prince Chap but he lie weds in instead instead stead the grownup Claudia The trick of time the stage rattle in the bag FRANKLIN |
