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Show dfliwnifiaied By GEORGE JEAN NATHAN. SO NUMEROUS are the plays to be considered today that I shall dispense with my customary j piquant and very Interesting j introductory remarks and proceed pro-ceed at once to the business of the meeting:. So: ' "Mother Carev's Chickens," made by Rachel Crothers from the novel of Kate Douglas Wiggin and s taped in the Cort theater, ma 3 be described as a sugar pill out of the same box j as "Pollyanna," "Daddy tjonglegs" and sweetmeats of similar kidnej". Designed unquestionably for small girls, moving picture actors and persons per-sons of like intellectual and philosophical philo-sophical attainments, a contemplation contempla-tion of the play on the part of an adult takes on the sensation of sit- -ting in a barrel of maple syrup. The tale, intrinsically of the so- ' railed "glad" school of literature, is . in the telling made doubly gladsome: J a veritable tornado of wall mottoes w and excerpts from the writings of It. Frank Crane. The stage seethes with optimism, sunshine, hope, faith, charity, nobility, altruism, glucose, whipped cream, molasses, peach preserve, pre-serve, metheglin, California sauterne, ore me de cacao, reassurance, good auspices. Jockey Club perfume, buoyancy, buoy-ancy, silver linings and banana oil. Abounds in Kissing. From the moment the curtain is hoisted the characters, with set smiles upon their faces, begin alluding allud-ing to everything as "just too sweet" and "just, too lovely," kissing one another an-other affectionately, and looking up to heaven; and this glad business continues con-tinues without a second's respite until un-til the final curtain falls and vouch safes one the immense pleasure of getting out into Forty-eighth street, where one may be bumped by the human hu-man motor cars and sworn at by their human drivers. The plot of the piece is of a family of five, who take over a dreary old house and warm it with their sweetness and benevolence. benevo-lence. Miss Edith Taliaferro is the featured member of a commonplace cast and, save for an excessively slipshod enunciation, acquits herself in seemly manner. Across the thoroughfare, in the Forty-eighth Street theater, we engage en-gage "The Land of the Free," by the Mesdames Fannie Hurst and Harriet Fo:d, with Miss Florence Nash occupying occu-pying the center of the platform. H .'ic, a direct descendant from the melodrama of our childhood hours, the ten -twenty-thirty species of belles lettres in which poor shop girls were forever being seduced by Minster Italians (the Chinese were often also pictured as white slavers in those days) 11 nd in which, at the grand finish, the lowly heroine was L-ver to be found in the embruce of the opulent fellow, who lives in the stock interior set of the local theater. Follows Old Formula. The present play follows the old formula with a high earnestness and its passions duplicate the familiar f owen Davis and Harry Clay Blaney fevers that raged in the era of Benjamin Ben-jamin Harrison. "The Ben Hur Chariot Race March," the Wagner palace car a nd embroidered suspenders. suspend-ers. The story of the piece has to do with a oung emigrant girl who comes to America, becomes a worker In a shirtwaist factory, turns to socialistic doctrines, improves the conditions of her fellow workers, rescues res-cues her sister from the foul clutches of the omnipresent Wop and yields at length to the nuptial entreaties of t he virtuous Croesus in the Rochester Roches-ter surtout. The manuscript is crudely composed and at all points obvious. The best performance is that of Vera Gordon as the emigrant's mother. Miss Nash Is effective in the vaudeville moments mo-ments of the play, but merely noisy in those portions that call for more practiced cnbotlnage. What Winthrop Ames saw In William Wil-liam Hurl hurt's "Saturday to Monday," Mon-day," currently visible in the Bijou tiieater, is a matter for a fellow better bet-ter at enigmas than I. The play Is, save for a few moments in its Initial act, an outdated and decidedly amateurish ama-teurish affair and one far beneath tiie call of Mr. Ames's theatric talents. A very attractive staging has here been wasted and. with this attractive staging, considerable good acting. . Ineffectually Revamped. The spectacle lies in the effort of a young suffragette to live with her new husband merely during' the period stipulated in the title of the play and to permit him, and herself, to do as they will the balance of the week a slender conte, and one not currently enriched by wit or Imagination. Imagina-tion. The third act amounts to little more than an ineffectual revamping of a similar Idea in "Allee-Sit-By-llie-Fire.'' For the rest, the piece Is related to the familiar terms of bachelor apartment, strange hour! who slides In via. the lire escape, irate Irish janitor, suspicious wife, ft,-. The company Includes Norman Trevor, eell Yapp and Miss Ruth S Ma yell fife. At the George M. Cohan theater, a farce by the Messrs. Marcin and At-well At-well entitled "Here Comes the Bride," is another theatrical evening eve-ning of familiar complexion. A young man. finding himself without funds, agrees for one hundred thousand dollars dol-lars to take to wife a eiled unknown. The latter turns out to be a sorry-visa sorry-visa ged daniosel with a tribe of six offspring. 1 m mediately the knot is tied, the young man's erstwhile reluctant re-luctant fiancee decides tha t she will 111 a it y him after all. From , this premise proceed humors of the occasion. oc-casion. The play Is related with no particular departure from the canons coverning farce of t his genre. The company numbers. among others. Miss Francine Larrimore and Otto Kruger. t While Slave Opus. A t the Fu 1 1 o n , very brie f 1 y and even now departed to that bourne, ct cetera, t he drama "Branded." the brain-child of one O. I. Bailey. A white slave opus. A drama of nefarious ne-farious doings. A gaudy piece. A spotless virgin, so goes the tale, has for mother a lady of dubious profession. profes-sion. The S. V.. so proceeds the 'ale, marries a millionaire and. in Parec, has hv him a child. All is woll. Then the telephone bell! The villain is in Fare and knows the secret se-cret of the V.'s past. What to do? Excursions and alarums and more excursions. ex-cursions. Crips the millionaire bus hand. "No! What's in the hlood is in the blood!" The door slams and the - V. goes out Into the nig lit. Pass now seventeen long years. The 15 V. has become a drug fiend, tfu lp still in Die tolls of the king of the white slavors. this Wmo, by way v-f chance, n Jew. The latter, how-, over, appears now to have his low .vc not so much on the 40-year-old V. (who would seem to the more Perspicacious orb to be slightly antiquated anti-quated for successful white slave material), ma-terial), but upon the V.'s chtld. who has arrived at maidenhood. This latter lat-ter the white slaver lures presently to Ids filthy den and assigns t hen his assistant, lite usual Italian, to do . A 1 tne. dirty work. Follow the rubber-stamp chasing w around the room, the pinioning of the Dapper's arms. the scream. the pounding on the door, the dousing of the glim, the entrance of the hemic gendarmes, the scuffle, t ho revolver Phot, tht hocus-pocus, the handcuffs, the rescue, the reunion nf flip vir tuous and the exit march by the orchestra. or-chestra. A tidy fable. The acting is on a par with the literary of the evening. eve-ning. Staging Is Praised. At the lvceum a melodrama by Willard Mack entitled "Tiger Rose." staged by Mr. Belasco. Of the piece Hseif, nothing need he written in the way of criticism. Manufactured out of the materials of countless creaky melodramas of other days. It presents us with nothing new. But of Mr. Belasco's stnging there is another tale to tell. Melodrama is the stage form to which the Belasco talents are best suited, and tiie.se talents are on the present occasion brilliantly expounded. The manipulation of the stage is splendidly contrived' and every melodramatic melo-dramatic value of the script completely com-pletely realized. Where it is a matter mat-ter of broad theatrical stuff like "Tiger Rose," Mr. Belasco is in his element. Tee play proper, as has been observed, ob-served, is primitive vaudeville, a story of the Canadian northwest, of murder, mur-der, of the love of the heroine for the culprit, of her sheltering him from the arm of the law and from his vindictive pursuers, of her aiding him to esca pe. and so on. Plainly here the materials of numberless melodramas. melodra-mas. The interest reposes wholly in the physical Investiture and, as recorded, re-corded, this investiture Is of suave finish and negotiated with uncommon dexterity. The acting, in the main, is very good. Miss Ignore CI rich shows steady improvement. She is. at this moment, and not excepting Miss Starr, the most promising woman under the Belasco direction. Others in the capable company are Thomas Findlay and F'edro de Cordoba. The author Is a memher of the cast. |