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Show By GEORGE JEAN NATHAN. O contend that Madame Sarah T Bernhardt is still a great actress ac-tress is to permit chivalry to obscure criticism. For it is evident, and unmistakably so, from a study of the lady's labors on the stase of the Empire theater during dur-ing this the most recent of her farewell fare-well tours of America, that the glory that is hers is rather now a glory of memory than a glory of contemporaneous contempo-raneous triumph. A remarkable woman one or the most remarkable, indeed, the . world has known the madame is at once a creature for amazement and envy; at an use when grandmothers are crying idiotically into their beer over the passing of the palmy days of Jenny Jen-ny Lind, Harriet Beecher Stowe and bustles, and at an age when grandfathers grand-fathers are rolling themselves around in wheel-chairs lamenting that TJlys-4? TJlys-4? Fes S. Grant didn't stop smoking in time, that Lotta is no longer on the -1 boards and that the New York Sun isn't what it used to be in Dana's day at an age far beyond the frontier fron-tier of even middle age, the Bernhardt Bern-hardt Is still working valiantly before the public's plaudits, delivering such young-girl botany as the following: "Oh, I was dreaming of bygone joys. Sweet music is a magician who, by the road of sudden sleep, led me to" fragrant fra-grant and golden gardens. Gay minnesinger minne-singer and gentle chambermaid have disappeared, and, taking the torcnes away, have left nothing but their empty emp-ty seats. But I do not mind solitude, for It agrees with me better than company and empty chatter, as long as my love Is in exile. Her Youth Remains. "Why are you but a lie, O joy that came to me in my dreams? My Lord Bertrand had come back and was covering my naked arm with kisses, and through the open gate entered the fragrance of green grass. No more did we think of the tfarracene! The nuns of the neighboring monastery were blending their silver voices and the bells were ringing for the morning worship. And we were strolling through forests and meadows, over the flower-studded lawns, and we breathed the perfume of marvelous flowers; and so loud sang the cheerful cheer-ful brooks, and so sweetly cooed the white doves, and such was the fragrance fra-grance of the white apple trees, and so blissful was my soul to see nature celebrating my happiness after such a long wait, and so strongly beat my ' heart, that I leaned against the arm of my beloved, fearing lest I might faint from joy. Oh, my knees are still shaking. Bertrand, my life, where are you? Are you thinking of me, 'who am thinking of you?" Is to Be Admired. Imagine a woman of seventy years declaiming and not without effect such amorous and pansted simooms. Surely there is a stubborn, unyielding something about such a soul to admire, ad-mire, however provocative of the unwholesome un-wholesome and rebellious chuckle the i Performance may be. And this is the J truth of the Sarah Bernhardt of to day. The art that was hers in the years now tucked away into the attic k trunks of memory is an art today . merely of shadow and echo. The voice of melted chiffon, the voice that thrilled her countless thousands in the theater's yesterday, is a voice out of which now lias gone most of the music, most of the languor of spring. The vitality that-onoe confounded is ebbed, and no pretense, however brave, may obscure its passing. It is no longer Sarah Bernhardt the actress that draws the crowd ; it is Sarah Bernhardt the woman the woman who, in these the fading years of her life, still dares drolly duel with the spirits of past triumphs. Has Lost Greatness. Bernhardt, otherwise, as she discloses dis-closes herself to her public today, is an actress of not particularly eminent emi-nent stature. It is useless to deny the fact. She handles, it is true, a very great repertoire great in size, though very puny in quality but her performance in none of the plays is more than a fleeting glimpse into the art of her performances of other years. She experiences the utmost difficulty in getting through with the physical businesses of the plays: it is necessary for her to resort to tables, chairs and couches to get through the evening. And periodically, even so. the strain upon her is patent. Her work, as said, is truly remarkable for a woman of her advanced years but it is work, not acting. Iil-mannered though the thought be. one cannot help agreeing with E- W. Howe, the venerable Atchison journalist, that the public goes to the theater less to venerate Sarah Bernhardt, the actress, ac-tress, than to see Sarah Bernhardt, the freak. Bernard Shaw's Observation. When Bernhardt, as In "Vitrail" (The Stained Glass Window), by Rene Fauehols, essays today such a role as Sweet Violano with all its rapturous lines, one is reminded with very vastly increased impudence of what Bernard Shaw, then critic to the Saturday Review, wrote of her as far back as 1S95 two and twenty years ago. "She paints her ears ''rlmson," said Shaw, "and allows them to peep enchantingly through a few loose braids of her auburn hair. Everv dimple has its dab of pink ; fip'l Iit fngertins are so delicately incarnadined that you fancy they are l:iii.-l.iiiem like her ears, and that the light is shining through their delicate deli-cate blood vessels. Her lips are like a newly-painted pill box; her cheeks have the bloom of a peach; she is beautiful with the beauty of her school and entirely inhuman and in-creditable. in-creditable. But the incredibility is pardonable because, though It is all the greatest nonsense, nobody believing believ-ing in it, the actress least of all, it is so artful, so clever, and carried off with such a genial air, that it is impossible im-possible not to accept it with good humor. One feels, when the heroine bursts on the scene, a dazzling vision of beauty, that, instead of imposing upon you. she adds to her own piquancv by looking you straight in the face and saying, in effect. 'Now. who would ever suppose that I am a grandmother!' " Is Only a Memory. But. as I say. that was nigh on tweniy-two vears auo, and though the feeling is that the grandmother challenge chal-lenge is still there, Sarah Bernhardt no longer "bursts upon the scene," but is alreadv seated securely on a divan when the curtain lifts an old, old lndv. No longer Is she so cunning in flouting- Time with rouge-stick and maiicaro, for age lias become cruel to !ifr and vindictive. What was merely dubious twenty-two years ago is not dubious today it is today entirely en-tirely without the range of possibility. possibil-ity. And Bernhardt is but a memory. It is something of a pity that Madame Ma-dame Bernhardt has elected to make her farewells in the dramatic claptrap clap-trap which she is currently offering. Surelv there was no need to exhume such obsolete flon-flon as that in which she Is appearing: empty one-act trifles and mediocre left-overs from the Gulg- nol. K Thomas's dramatization of Alice Tnier Miller's story. "Come Out of the Kitchen." is holding the boards at ih- (leorge M. Cohan theater, with Miss Ruth Chatterton in the sidereal' role. Mr. Thomas writes nicely and has a proper respect for the English language, but, saving "Her Husband's v lfe," lie has thus far seen fit to dissipate dissi-pate his talents upon the conventional Cinderella revampings and kindred ancestral an-cestral wares that, vear in and vear out. are trafficked in by the managerial gentlemen. With so few comedy writers of the Thomas skill in the native na-tive theater this Is decidedlv a matter mat-ter for regret, especially since Mr. Thomas has doubtless long ere this achieved for himself a sufficiently bulky bank balance to permit him to apply himself to things dramatieallv more essenceful and artisticallv worth while. His latest effort contains one scene !n the last act a dinner table bit that Is genuinely adroit and quite charming; but the rest of the evening is composed of the enttrelv stereotyped stereo-typed materials of the Broadwav show-shop. (he so-called "sure-fire" thin.eama.ilgs that enchant and enrav-isii enrav-isii the yokel and depress any person who chances to prefer Joseph Conrad to Eleanor H. Porter. Beethoven to Earl Carroll and Rodin's figures to the Kewples. The fable of "Come Out of the Kitchen" Is largely of a piece with the fable of Miss Clare Kummer's "Good Gracious Annabelle," the farce visible in the Republic, which has alreadv al-readv been reviewed In these columns. It replays the tune of "She Stoops to Conquer,'' with several young southerners south-erners masquerading as servants and with the pinrhable sweetie of the group eventually falling into the arms of the ri"h and handsome Yankee. Miss Chatterton gives a pleasant performance per-formance of the ingenue role and Bruce McRae is as agreeable as ever in the clothes of the leading lover. Henry Miller has given the play a good staging. Anna Held Mediocre. 1 On the casino stage Miss Anna Held is rolling her eyes and shaking her corsets in a piece given tne title "Follow Me." Since I am personally given to a profound prejudice against such passe cantharides. I constitute a rather poor critic of the enterprise. I may merely report, therefore, that several of my august confreres have found much to praise loudlv in the exhibition and that the Casino's business busi-ness seems to be such as to warrant the Messrs. Shubert buying a couple of new fur overcoats apiece. Miss Held, to set down a more personal opinion, seemed to me the weakest link in the entertainment. A small woman, by name Sylvia Jason, engaged en-gaged my attention more dulcetly and a rather vulgar comedian extracted ex-tracted a lewd chuckle or two from my otherwise perfectly respectable system by alluding to his vain efforts to reach "the pinochle of success" and by reciting a bit of verse to the general gen-eral effect that. "This is a world of ' wickedness; this Is a world of vice; this is a world of crime and sin; ain't this world nice?" One may now observe what a simple soul I am beneath my venerable and forbidding exterior. 'J' he tunes of the show are not especially es-pecially taking, though the costumes are In several instances sinking. Among the mimes are Harrv Tighe, L-etty Yorke. Henry Lewis and V. P. Carlton. The scenery for the first act! though the programme declines to admit ad-mit it, was painted by mv friend, A To.xen Worm. The report" that it was the work of M. Francois Wilstach i indignantly and emphatically denied by the management. |