OCR Text |
Show f Feminist Plays Staged S ?i i :l Fail to Cheer Critic " i f l "The Bargain,- a Vital, Gripping Drama;. Bits j J From Shakespeare Presented by Stars. l'1! . By Vanderheydcn Fyles m'".K TBW YOBK, April 13. Well, F the irIs lm a biR time lU t .. 1 auy-5Vn:y' H certainly was a H - f. great day for tho woman's P suffraeo part,'. Rooters for the 9 t cause crowded into tho matineo unit un-it i ; til tho walls of tho spacious Broad- y way theater bulged like the stom-B stom-B fj ach of a puppy after its first good 3 i' meal. And what a noiso they did it ranko! I thought we were going h V o have tho preinioro of "Tho I W, Playboy of tho Western World" all g over again, and began to limber up jt .- for my potato-dodging uiovoment. i I But I was wrong; the girla had & . . Binipry turned out to show that, M ar -.compared to the Daughters of Eve, 5t i tho Sons of St. Patrick aro a lot of t. : ; pikers when it cornea to tho big sf noise. ffl npHB A-l pandemonium broke k f loose after tho second o the $ throo new plays, when Mrs. Joan Nelson Penfiold, chairman of the I woman suffrago part', began to toll , the audience tho reason why tho f, C cause collapsed at Albany. Hisses si p sizzled in tho air lik tho spluttor- f-r tJ iucs of the witches' cauldron in 1 j "Macboth." Jr !' "By all parliamentary procedure ' - tho world over," Baia Mrs. Pcn- 7 f, licld, "only a man or woman vot- 3 I inir in the afllrmativo ia allowed to ffl ' i move to reconsider. This is be- i? q cause parliamentary law is common ife j sense. In our scnato and nssemblj' 5r V the other rulo obtains, and this fey i ? should be changed, for othor bills B: fj than our own may receive the same r : treatment." $ Hisses were abundant for tho ''ri' ts, names of Assemblyman Jacob & Lev', -who had voted against tho jTnw n women after having signed an J-t ngrooment to stand with them, and s ?j of Speaker Morritt, who had ro- fused to recognize AsBemblyman iVik' ' Murray; but the lustiest volley Tfiii4' I Tvas Tesorvei fr Assemblyman t !jj t Culliver, who had moved tho re-vjfc re-vjfc consideration of tho woman's bill com ! after first voting against it. A pe-itfjj pe-itfjj i' tition to Governor Dix to call an liuipi ? extra session of the legislature was aJs! i TC3d; and a plea was put before - f -nc audience to write or telegraph oe$U tlieir thanks to him "before you j'gta i hear whether he has dono it or tO'iy ' not." &i, i npIIE theater was draped with e$ In X siiff ragctio colors, and throe f new plays wore acted. Leaders of uJCS. tlie causo beamed from boxes fes- toonod with tho same Hags and rtiitft 4 Btrenmcrs that had been hung sa- i tirically above them at the pre- J?g micro of "The Ncvor-Homcs; " and lini when a "star entrauco" had been ri 1 worked up, I half expected to soo indoh S Gcorgo .Monroe stuinblo into view, suld it f1 However, it was .Mary Shaw who Ihsw 1 entered. But wo must wait to j talk of that and of tho Now ths York premiere of tho Bernard t0 1 Shaw comedy in which she playod W & until we have considered tho prc- tyllij liminary two suft'rago nlays. The irr.W $ firat was ominously called "Kid- tby ,U r- die;" was by an unnamed author ndtij of highly sentimental turn; and, aetpt indeed, stuck on the palate liko rChii i an ovordoso of fudge, seasoned wi l a soa of salty tears, f. "! 4 Suzanne Sheldon and Malcolm ft? IS ' Dunn, impersonating a divorced or - couple, met in a hotel by appoint- .is. i mont to discuss tho custody of their S "U ! child. They had nothing very new P vt - to any: and were burdened with an rm astoundinglv old and tottering S f frnme to say it. in. She had lost o iho ' suit becm,se 8,10 permitted 1tEi?L' l damaging ovidence to go unde- j 'fli 1 fended in ordor to protect the good 1K iiamo of an erring sistcrl At tUs delayed poiut it fell out that, tired of waititie for mamma and papa to - '. stop talking, Kiddie had rolled UW over and expired. In just what way this dialogue held a brief for NjK woman suffrage. I cannot say; pos- JfVlWJ sibly it was designed to warn u H IK husbands who presume to answer aSK' their wives back that their progeny Jml will dio therent. rtRSJl T? N PASSANT, it might ha JfjWm -tl noted that the Buffrago pro- vZJf ml gramme ten cents each for tho cauae showed feminine defiance ' iS. of tho fascination of a matinee Iv idol by mentioning that Malcolm f Dunn, who is actiug regularly with Lowis Waller in "Boaucairc," ap- ?' neared by "kind permission of Mr. S Lewis Walker." , . . i Tho next piece, a less lugubn- oub affair, was written with con- i siderablo 6kill, in tho mntter oi ? expressinc character and theonos through credible indmduals; but it? theme is one with which anm-tour anm-tour thinkers are eternally besot. It. was called "Lib." and had been falcon by Anno Mooro from a i- Ftorv bv Margaret Collier Graham. An engaging, honorable old farmer was horrified by tho fact tbiit his sou had ncvor married tho mother t of his little boy. Indeed, that nl- lago cnt-up purposed taking a flut- h tery and flouncy villago bollo as e his wife. His father, staunch in ; tho belief that Lib should become : a wife as well as a mother, camn r to her with an enforced proposal h i'vom his eon: but. bIio quite I scorned tho proposition, saying p that his original failure to do ge I right thine had po Isappointod ; hor in his character that she v wisned nothing whatsoever to do with him; that her wholo future i life should be centered in her spn, 5 and that; tho boy should be pro- t tected from the contaminating .in- m fluence of such a father. Tho fact doe? not appear to have occ" Ml to 'he author that the question At MM . nf a losal marriage ib uot so 3j'Wl much the concern of the contract. Ill Si pnrtio. aB. of thctgos lbley 8 roe 5 "rt'lkV ffanco0 ""'cSnvcnVion is Pratty w pnss mU8tor w butanto in the outer edges of the realm of thought. MRS. PENFIELD 'S Pandemonium Pande-monium was tho next number num-ber of the programme; after which everybody prepared for a thoroughly thor-oughly good time with Bernnrd Shaw. But Mr. Shaw is not immune im-mune from the danger that bosets all literary leaders that is, tho pottoraless pit which his own genius gen-ius has discovered, tho tomptation of over-emphasizing tho very quality that distinguished his work from the ordinarily good. Pmero's later plays havo lost something o their human poignancy poig-nancy by thoir almost scientific perfection of construction; Henrv James's elegance of style has" developed de-veloped almoBt to the point of intelligibility; in-telligibility; tho Shavin topsy-turvqydom topsy-turvqydom has double-crossed lt-solf lt-solf into mcro buffonory. Ono or two of his. most recent pieces being be-ing essentially ophemoral in design, de-sign, it is safo to hope, and even to believe, his ondloss talk and utter ut-ter disrogard of form resulting in a combination of borodom and confusion con-fusion is a passing phase; but surely ''Press Cuttings" got woll caught in the paseagel MB. SHAW, who has shrewdly shrewd-ly upheld the feminist side of every argument from tho days when advocating Nora Holmor and "A Doll's House" was a "cause" to tho militant nowadays of Mrs. Pankhurst, Carrie Chapman Coat and Lady Constance Lytton, wrote the comedy of "Press Cuttings" for tho benefit of woman suffrage The British consor man that lio is! refused to license Us production; produc-tion; would it be unmanly and unfair un-fair to say something for the objections ob-jections to a play which, not to quoto from its cutting dialogue, puts Mr. Shaw's most drastic views into the mouths of such clumsily and thinly veiled prototypes proto-types of tho prime minister and Lord Kitchener as Mr. Balsquith and Lord Mitcbnoh? At first, tjic very topsyturveydom and abandon aban-don of "Press Cuttings" makes for laughter, but presently we wonder whether wo are not meroly frightened into hysteria by tho xlazzling namo of Gv B. S. Tho period is that future day "when military conscripiion shall havo been established in England." petticoats and a bonnet, arrives-at the war office pursued by a mob of auti-siiffragettes. "Tho only way a primo minister can get from Downing street to tho war office," ho explains, "in by assuming this disguise, calling 'votes for women!' and chaining himself to your doorstep. ' ' The antis, we are told now constitute con-stitute the militaut ranksj having hcen so disgusted by tho government's govern-ment's opposition to the demand of women for the -tfoto that they are about to form a regimont to fight them. Mrs. Bangor, a leader among tho militant antis, maintains main-tains that all great men in history were womon in disguise. "Do you Bupposo Napoleon would havo treated womon as brutally as he did if he hadn't been a woman himself?" she Baks portentously. "Of what use is a voto to men! Give mo a regiment of women with sabres and wo will have no fear of a rogimeut of I men with votes." THE orderly commanded to eject hor from the war of-iice of-iice looked at hor linn, reliant and massive figure and thou paused in hesitation. However, teaching him his duty, sho seized him so oxpcrtly by tho collar and jacket that he was out of tho way without with-out a moment's more ado. Every point of humor in tho character was driven in to ita fullest by the brilliant elocution of Mary Shaw and, especially, by her dolightful seriousness of demeanor; but what aro we to say to a leading humorist humor-ist who calls his militant anti-suffragette Mrs. Banger in order that another character may remark upon tho number of quiet people who bear aggressive names? j Bernard Shaw and, therefore, his more slavish worshipers ap- ! pears to bo hugely delighted with the cbaractor of a charwoman who runs tho war office; who unburdens unbur-dens herself of various befuddling "views;" who remarks of suffragettes suffra-gettes and antl-suffragottes, "I. don't know whether it's them that wants it or them that don't; they aro all aliko when they got into a fitato about it;" and who finally consents to become the wife of Lord Mitchncr, who wants her he-cause he-cause sho is "the only person con-noctod con-noctod with tho British army who knows whore everything is when it is wanted." At first sho demurs bocausft "every woman is a charwoman, char-woman, once sho gets married," the only differenco being that afterwards af-terwards she receives no pay for her work with which bit of impudent impu-dent and portentous foly it Bcems as well to leav tho author who used to take tho trouble to write nuch rare comedies as "Candida" and "Man and Superman.' ALTHOUGH fully appreciating that a literary prophet is usually without much honor even in his own column I am ready to go on record as "seeing" the name of the author of 'The Bargain" Bar-gain" as amoug tho bright lights of tho future. Not that I am rash onough to mnko any propbecv whatsoever for John Maynard Booth; the simple reason being that no such dramatist exists. The nom de theater is a hodee-nodgft evolved from the fact that HiHiflrd Booth wrote a tonso and Rnppinjr drama called "The Sacrifice ' which Oora Maynard refashioned refash-ioned into "The Bargain. " But T think T am divnljnuc no senet in Urine that, however numerous Mi68 Maynard n alterations may have been, none was vital enough to relieve tho originator of the central idea from responsibility for the succors or failure of the dfamu. Though little of his work has reached the footlights to far, '.Mr. Booth has at least impressed tho critical with the fact that he plans and executes his plays with extraordinary extra-ordinary conviction; "that, like- Edward Ed-ward Sheldon, he is alive enough to the ordinary life about him to discover dis-cover his theme and fashion hif illustrations il-lustrations from the jumpiest, yet vital, instances; and that, if too unrolievcdly seriour, the majority of his utterances throb with humanity hu-manity and strength. WTTH the first lifting of the curtain "The Bargain" strikes out almost comically into tragedy. A widow, Mrs. Arnold, is distracted through the realization realiza-tion that her son, on trial for his life, cannot provo the truth of his denial of murder charged. Only oue man in the world could do that; and this "eye-witness," the prisoner's stepbrother, is known to Mrs. Arnold and hor son as a waster and a fraud. This man and his stepmother aro tho chief characters char-acters of tho piny; their types may be most vividly and directly indicated as similar to the Tully Marshall character in "The City" and to Marv Shaw's own Mr?. Alving iu "Ghosts"; and they are, in spite of these implied coin- Jarisous, admirably, played by ohn Emerson and Amelia Gardner. Gard-ner. The man, Eliot Arnold, is charged with having embezzled that part of his fatlier's estate which should havo gone- to his sister sis-ter and his stepmother; and, though he succeeds in convincing them of his innocence, ho presently confesses to their lawyer that he did speculate and loso the money. The attorney allows him a week m which to make a last endeavor to straighten out his affairs. There the first act ends. The second brings tho striking novelty of tho drama. Fatal senteneo on the un-soon un-soon boy seems imminent; Eliot appears. Ho makos an astounding offer to his stepmother. In ox-chaneo ox-chaneo for immunity and for a considornblo sum of money, ho will save his stepbrother. lie will not merely deny the other's guilt; he will become confused and ultimately ulti-mately break down; and, finally, he himself will receive his stop-brother's stop-brother's sentence. Mrs. Arnold is horrified; even a mother cannot can-not countenance such a sacrifice. But presently we unearth tho reason: rea-son: Eliot has been told by his physician that a disease from wliich he suffers must inevitably prove fatal within a month. Why not. soli his life a poor thing that can buy so much? Tho bargain bar-gain is agreed upon; the astounding astound-ing news spreads; and tho act. ends with Eliot's arrest and confession. con-fession. Tho next act brings the bewildering bewild-ering information that tho diagnosis diag-nosis was wholly incorrect that Eliot Arnold may look forward to Suite as long a life as any of us! ut the ingenious author has still another twist for his last act. Eliot, now fighting for his life, bocomes panic-stricken, loses eef-possossion eef-possossion and discretion; and we learn that he himself was the murderer. IF ONE wants Shakospearo now- i adays it appears one must he watchfully alert for brief and fleeting glimpses. Indeed, . since tho season of 1911-1912 got really under way, the only opportunities New York has had to see the greatest of all dramatic poets acted wore those offered by a several-weeks' and very interesting engagement filled by E. II. Sotb-eru Sotb-eru and Julia Marlowe, at a theater the-ater far from Broadway. For the rest, wo have had to do with mo-tion-picturo substitutes and tho oven less substantial promises of Graco George, to play Beatrice of "Mitch Ado." In the meantime, wo have had two agreeable snatches, brought about through offers from ambitious actors to holp the actors' fund by appearing appear-ing at a benefit in famous roles. Lewis Waller, now enjoying a generally gen-erally unexpected success in "Beaucairo," established his London Lon-don fame and popularity by following fol-lowing Richard Manefield's load in moro cases than in this. A notable not-able instance was "King Henry V." luasinuch as Madge Tither-adge, Tither-adge, who played the French princess in that history with him, 18 in this country, it " was simple for them to let us see tho wooing scone. It is, perhaps, the most agreeable incident in the play; and its humorous and sentimontal charms are so well within the abilities abil-ities of those two pleasnnt visitors as to have entertained us thoroughly. thor-oughly. THE trial scene from "The Merchant of Venice" wjis more of an undertaking and could not be said to havo como off quite so happily. It appeared to have been entered into without rehearsal rehear-sal that is, without a "full" rehearsal, re-hearsal, for every important role was intrusted to some ono who had enacted it before. That of No-rissa, No-rissa, assigned to Olive Wyndbaui, was the sole excoptjon; but if Ne-rissa Ne-rissa figured only in the trial scono it would bo a "walking lady's" part indeed. As Shylock, N. C. Goodwin did nothing to disturb the established verdict that he is, at best, "respectable" in the character; char-acter; his rendinc is indefinite and his embodiment lacks forco and color. Constance Collier, revollng in Portia, swept him out of view without the slightest difficultv, just as Bhe easily outplayed all the others. Butj with no grounds but tho trial scene to moot her on, cveryon.o but Shylock would ncc-osFarily ncc-osFarily fall before a Portia far less radiant of person and resonant reson-ant of voipe than Constance Collier: Col-lier: and with a. Jew who had all that ho could do and more to btand up for himself, the British hrunette had things easily her own way'. Actors of 'as much ability and Shakcspearonn experience ap A. E,, Anson and Julian L 'Estrange would not thank me for praiping them in such fragments as tbo roles of Antonio and Bassanio iu this scene; Mr. L'Estrange and Miss Collier, bv the way, wore Bassanio and Portia, a year or so ago, whtn Sir Herbert Treo first acted Shylock, At the Fund matinee the audience audi-ence seemed to get its sroatept pln$uro out of "The Merchant of Venicfl" through tho oddity of get-tine get-tine an unrestricted view of the 5ettinc of the scenery on tho vnst and mechanically intricate stage of tho Ccnturv theater (formerly the New), the curtain hcing loft up for the purpose. All hail, Shake-ponro! |