Show s I Now for othe the Roof Garden Theatres BY FRANKLIN FYLES FYLES i New hew York May 31 Theatrical amusements are going outdoors for tor the warm season Next week the sum summers summers summers mers singularities at Coney Island will begin to be describable This week week k the t e erUest earliest rUest of ot the Broadway roof root theatres opens In a way wa that this letter shall tell about But first let it be said that drama ma itself Is never in the years round und so odd as at summers outset and to prove that It Is so this year I Iam Iam Iam am going to give an account of ot His Hl Terrible Secret or The Man Monkey This play is performed at nt a theatre In Brooklyn borough yet Jt it seems to be bethe bethe bethe the most absurdly Impressive melo melodrama m melodrama lo drama the most ridiculously engross engrossing ing hg that I ever saw I have laughed outright in thinking of it and I have had haq several nightmares also in mem memory memory ory of ot It ItIn ItIn itIn In a spectacular play or Christmas pantomime brought from London two years ago an African gorilla dis disported ported Forted at first in monkey fashion but gradually his gibbering became articulate articulate late speech his behavior grew he put on the manners and anil clothes clot es of fashion and at the end of fue evening he was a Piccadilly dandy The caricature cari carL caricature ahne had been intended as a satire of oC Darwinism by putting forth the Lon London don dpn swell as the missing between monkey and man In the process of ot human development I dont Know ow how the creature had been acted over aver there but here he was given In earnest by William H Turner and so effectually at least to me that he has been an nn acquaintance whom I would be glad to get rid of I described de him himin in IT this correspondence at the time and then Mr Turner came carne to me with the project of making him the he star tar charac character character character ter In a serious drama But I said Where oft earth is there a manager with the means and the nerve to put a play of at such a monster on the stage Rind and the last I knew of the actor until I read an advertisement advertise ent of His Terrible Ter Terrible Terrible Secret or The Th Man Monkey he was still sun in quest of f an able and will willing willing ing producer Charles E Blaney writer and exploiter of a hundred plays for forthe forthe forthe the populace e is the man and that fact tact renders the U e experiment all the bolder because bec use the uncertainty of be such a study iia t anthropology before a Tsp special audience of highbrowed scientists scientists scientists was bound to be on an ous ens risk before a assem assemblage assemblage i blage bage of or people who tf U they tried could I rot ot distinguish Darwin from Dowle Dowie I both being if It not hair i brained v Of course there was the Dr Jekyll and nd Mr Hyde of Robert Louis Stev creative genius for tor Turner and Blaney BInney to tie their hope to and they did It by making their no monkey at all but like ilke a Wholly human being with the good and the evil in his nature In alternating and contesting control contro They dared and I dont wonder to give to their Melmoth elmoth a gorilla for tor a father and a woman for fr a mother thus dramatizing that dreadful piece lof statuary which shows a beast more horrible than any faun f un or satyr carrying a girl away to the forest It is told old at the beginning of or the way day ay that before birth his mother was so frightened by a gorilla that her child was marked by a facial resemblance io fo a monkey not only but was also abnormally un ferociously fero brutish whenever I his monkey nature overpowered his hisOn contrastingly On gl exalted human nature He Is a grown man at an African bun bungalow bungalow bungalow galow when then the audience first sees him 11 m an assistant to a savant collect Ing specimens n natural history for tor the Smithsonian Institute at Washington He has been educated and ordinarily i he hols is polite although he says he hears the call o the wild and feels an al almost almost almost most desire to fly tl to the jungle in response to it His face has hasa a monkeys features his head is shaped like a monkeys and he might be a gigantic monkey dressed dr like a man for exhibition in a museum He loves his employers dainty daughter aughter devotedly and hopelessly it is with difficulty that he restrains himself when he sees her heart go to a worthy wooer and on witnessIng the insolent kiss of a de he does not stop at wresting her from the arms of her assailant but twists and wrenches him with a strength that has been described as m to tear a tiger to pieces Pi ces and gnaws him savagely like a beast r Then and there In the first scene the status of ot Melmoth the Man Ian Monkey e mes imes fixed and unalterable with h hat lit portion of or the public for which the theay theay lay ay has h been written He Ill is a mu museum seum freak of nature a physical mon mono montro tro to be shuddered at yet laughed l at for fr any manifestation of 0 J and an not considered at ill all all allas allas illas as presenting the phenomena of a sen sensitive sen sensitive human soul embodied with the savage instincts of or a beast I wonder r i the t e authoritative Mansfield from whom hom t our cultured people accepted the thed d Jekyll and Hyde could have gone goneS safely S fely further and triumphed with the Erring entities of man man and monkey in Blaney the Knows the audiences of his dozen the theatres theatres atres alres and while Turner the author auther actor may have aspired to bring out a X Darwinian study in the monkey origin c of man It Is no doubt better business to t make a very usual melodrama of stolen s len papers and misappropriated with crude characterization aid the Man Monkey for a merely merel eye opening op feature At the end Melmoth takes t kes the tho girl Into th the Jungle to save hr h r from murderous villainy There T ere he ho heI holets lets I s his tits Simian head and face go un nn unshorn uns shorn sorn s and unshaven till in his rem remnants nants of clothing he looks like a agorilla arilla gorilla rilla than before He becomes so bestial that after pounding breaking rind t nd biting the maidens two assassins tb t death In a single encounter ho he de del deI delvers I l vers ers her ber to her h r worthy orthy lover hears henrs In and louder the call of the i lid and runs away from mankind t live and die with the gorillas On the way back from Brooklyn and andt that t at hideous play pia to the Jardin Jar ln de saris Earls as newly located on the top of Oft two t o Broadway theatres it Is la worth worthwhile while to stop In the and see a aa aa a that contains no woman The Thet title t tIe of The Friends of Labor Is Urical the subject being really the thees foes f es of labor who pretend to t be friend friendly ly as set forth by Julius Hopp a so socialist o with revolutionary r if not nO anarchistic an anarchistic tendencies The first act con conj j b ts is of a meeting of capitalists and la laer 9 b er r leaders J aders to arbitrate a strike with Bishop P Potter acting as a peace peacemaker peacemaker peacemaker maker and the wily monopolists of ot a street railway trust coddling and fooling fool foolIng foolIng Ing the trades unionists The second act Is at a session of the Central Labor Union where scheming politicians bam bamboozle ozle a majority of the delegates and at socialist presumably mably Arthur Hopp himself Is thrown out for tor Insistently denouncing the hypocrites The third act is at a mass meeting m in a municipal campaign when hen the he Democratic Labor party and the Republican Industrial party have both played Hayed succeSSfUllY successful against the Socialists for the working workings moru votes Thus of ot ti a along Ion long drama is made up Wholly holly of ot con conflicting conflicting conflicting oratory Then comes cones a fourth act net of prophecy There Is a riotous strike of ot railway unionists unionist a street str t fight ft ht with strikebreakers br akErs and finally n t deadly conflict between the united la lab b Fers and the national guard the workingmen being led to victory by the socialist who looks and talks like Hopp is being presented throughout the week afternoons as well as even evenings evenings ings in u a 1 usually devoted to performances in Yiddish for the Polish Jew Tew populace but it Il Is spoken in to Eng English English lish and its radical pleas for socialism are loudly cheered ch Well VeIl hero we o are In the Jardin do d Paris No one would accuse It on ap appearance appearance appearance of being Parisian even imi imitatively but for the advertisements in inthe Inthe inthe the newspapers ff and the pictures pl tUr s of f fr recklessly r frisky frIsk sirens on op 1 th bill bUl billboards bUlbo billboards boards bo ids The pagodas wined twined with wis wisteria wisteria wisteria teria which made the place vInce a Japan Japanese ese garden last summer have been taken out but nothing Frenchy has har been put on the stage or In the au We Ye find It a thoroughly resort on this opening night because It Is crowded by New Yorkers s vho I make tenderloin life what it is s The date Is May Ia 27 21 with summer only our days off but this has been no balmy spring and a thill hlll wind is I blowing Down at Coney Island the shows are ready for the public but the public ready for tor the shows Sim Similarly the gardens are kept I shut by bv the unseasonably cool weather all ill save Sava this Jardin de Paris which has promised to shake the ceilings of the two theatres underneath with gaiety from tram the boulevards of the French capital But the announced play of deviltry is kept waiting walting for fol congenial hot hat air and in Its stead a lot of stale things are brought out from cold stor storage storage storage age The garden is roofed and sided against the rain that the gusty wind Is blowing about so there is no touch tou h hot of ot June at this tip end of May and the the waiters walters wait walt for tor not noton noton noton on people who have no torrid thirst to tobe tobe tobe be slaked The only difference in aspect between this garden audience and an ordinary theatre audience Is la lathat that the lights of hundreds of cigars twinkle In the haze of ot smoke like fire fireflies fireflies flies files In the fog of a bog And yes yonder vender Is something Parisian after all Two young fellows In evening dress sit at a table with two girls In what my companion tells me are lingerie gowns gown I can see for myself that they dont wear shirt waists I have hava slowly but surely learned to recognize a n shirt shirtwaist shirtwaist shirtwaist waist on sight and these habiliments although presenting a plenty of peck peek points are filmy with lace flut fluttery fluttery fluttery tery with ribbons and altogether beau beautiful beautiful beautiful The four are sipping iced ab absinthe absinthe absinthe sinthe But the peculiarity of the girls is that they are public smokers Each holds a cigarette between the tips of gloved fingers puts It once in a white while to her lips and contributes to the vol volume volume volume ume of tobacco smoke that th t comes comes from mens cigars And one of them has caught the knack of sending up p her smoke in circles like a little man while the other emits It with masculine facility through her nose Oh w Iva e are getting on The stage doings however make no advance in rakishness We get bet instead a program of ot mostly fa familiar familiar specialties making a good goodenough goodenough 1 enough but not novel novi nov show Next N v ek I shall be able to tell of fresh diversion here of a new Cohan play In another aerial theatre and of ot Ham Hammerstein oddities in a third but this letter owing to the weather conditions cant Inform you of any summer s the theatric theatric atric astonishments except except the living pictures and eye y statuary at the Jardin de Paris And this exhibition of ot artists models is not brought to New York from Paris but from London where for a year or orr o so it has bas been on view at one of ot the big bip bl music halls Goodness knows or It i imay may he be more accurate to say f i knows living pictures passed long ago age Into disregard from the first I saw s w which were town by bv the famous artist of his day Matt Morgan to thelast thelast the thelast last I have seen which were cheap and vile In female minstrelsy How lIow can audacious Indecency further go In Ih posing p denuded women for public shame shamp The Tho assemblage a at the Jardin do Paris in the tenderloin been beena able a lc to imagine even with the pictorial pictorial rial Jesters rs to td help their fancy tancy but no noone noone noone one in the assemblage doubts that an I ultimatum In nudity will be reached And It Is II a handsome gathering of oC peo pee people people I pie with the money and the desire to ornament their diversions What have they come for to see They run their eyes down the bill One two and up up to tOA a of the acts are tl fled as familiars They are received in apathetic disdain as they thel follow one another A trifling amount of atten alten attention attention tion is given to the girl who in the Elizabethan costume of at a page nage dis displaces displaces places place the usual boy In changing the tle announcement cards at the sides of the stage stageS She e is I a pretty creature and it Is possible to eye ce her under undercover undercover i cover of merriment for tor she is a novice who evidently misses her petticoats and whose bashful gait is amusing Along about after this has ceased to be ba an object of admiration and is being b guyed a little she placards Living pictures and statuary Anh But the people dont d nt ejaculate their expectancy To do so be In good form It done dime in our blase bla set s t Y f these h smart n rt font folk betray be y their curiosity to to an alert observer as plainly as do the tourists who gaze at New Now York from the sight Ight sightseeing sightseeing I seeing motor cars carsIn carsIn carsIn In front of you we wa hear an Imag Imaginary imaginary inary conductor say In the language of the program you OU will see a mar marvellous marvellous marvellous exhibition of plastic and gra graphic graph graphic ph Ie art of beauty on canvas and In marble or bronze yet embodied by liv living livIng living ing forms torms selected for their suitably beautiful perfection Never has an expectation of at Inde Indecency Indecency been more charmingly disappointed disappointed disappointed pointed Never N ver has the device of liv living livIng living ing pictures s been made to serve true trueart trueart rue art more positively There are twelve of ot the pictures Seven are copies caples of famous paintings with the original canvas reproduced In all exactitude except pt that the tho sizes are so enlarged that the figures may be of a natural stature and the women have been chosen for semblance resemblance r Jn tn faces and ald shapes to those which the artists cre created created created The expertness with which these i models are posed tho costuming the tha th lighting and the blending of f them Into tho the painted environments creates an Illusion that is wonderful The woman in tn Gainsborough g Duchess of ot Devon Deon Devonshire Devonshire shire and The Swing i dont look at all like showgirls set SAt out for personal pet onal admiration No fellow would think of sending around a note to the stage door asking one ope of at them out to supper Even EYen In tn the cases of t Knight Errant and Leigh Leightons tons ton Bath of Psyche in to each of A 1 Ji ili a 3 naked woman Is the figure Its sauciest chappie chapple would be likelier I 1 to look In the corner of the frame forthe forthe for forthe the artists card and the catalogue number rather than the name and ad address address address dress of the live girl Three |