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Show QPlaifornu- By GEORGE JEAN NATHAN. THE dominant note in the more recent metropolitan theatrical exhibitions is that of melodrama. melo-drama. Melodrama, as everyone every-one well knows, is that form of drama which noids the mirror, not up to nature, but up to the theater; the mould of drama in which every-. every-. one acts less In accordance with the dictates of his own coneeienee than in accordance with the dictates of Sardou and Owen Davis, and in which Hie hero is to he distinguished from the villain, only after much difficulty, dif-ficulty, by observing which of the two is standing up the stralghter when the. curtain comes down on the big ao-t. Heroism, in melodrama, is ever less a matter of physical or moral bravery than of mere carriage, the hero of melodra ma being generally that member of the cast who looks and ants lea-st like the Duke of Wellington Wel-lington and most like Francis X. Bushman. Melodrama, of all the forms of theatrical the-atrical entertainment, is the most primitive, the most jejune. Its philosophy holds that the great crises of life occur always in the vicinity of railroad trestles, North river piers or sawmills; that the balance of power falls inevitably to the man who has the least sense of humor, and tnat Chinese laundry men are always United States secret service agents in' i disguise. And while, true enough, the melo-dram'as melo-dram'as lately discovered in New ; York have made shift to hide this intrinsic philosophy beneath the tinseled tin-seled pauds of more or less adroit theatrical subterfuges, the philosophy is, for all that, plainly discernible, and the melodramas are still, at bottom, the same old melodramas. Example Is Given. Take, lor example, the piece in which George Arli.cs Is this season appearing. ap-pearing. The collaborative effort of Miss Mary Hamlin and ' Mr. Arliss bears the name of "Hamilton" and purports ' to recount the adventures nf Alexander Hamilton during his struggle to make solid the credit of this country in the reign of General Washington. The stage swarms with actors labeled with famous names Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Chief Justice John Jay, Robert Morris. Mor-ris. General Philip Schuyler. Count Talleyrand. William Giles. The manuscript is rich in reference to famous episodes of history, celebrated jousts in diplomacy, great capitals and battles and wars. The scenes are in the meeting places of the great figures of the day, in the drawing rooms of the great diplomatists. But the play, for all that, is essentially little more, under this grand parade, than the familiar melo-piece in which the hero, on the eve of his triumph, Is blackmailed by the villain, with the aid of an unscrupulous un-scrupulous trollop, and forced into a corner, only to get his wind again In the infallible happy finale and, with a grandiose wave of the hand, give the knave the gate. Ralph Beaumont, he hero of our nonage, we hear now named Alexander Alex-ander Hamilton. Jem Dalton, the villain of our gallery days, we hear now addressed as William Giles of Virginia. Marie de la Gal, the French adventuress of yonder days, we see now as Mrs. Reynolds. The den of the highbinders is transformed into "The Exchange Coffee House in Philadelphia," and the canyon at Red Gulch is now "A Room In Alexander Hamilton's House in Philadelphia." But, save the designations, all is ' much the same. Vastly more polished, perhaps, and vastly better acted, in good truth, but the same neverthe- j less. Mr. Arliss gives his familiar per- 1 for mance in the central role, showing show-ing Hamilton at that crisis in his career when his great plans were threatened by the exposure, on the part of his foes, of his peccadillos with the fair charmer Reynolds. in the latter character Miss Jeanne Eagles is quite charming and doubtless doubt-less the best member of the company, com-pany, tt is a matter for regret' that the play was not written with greater great-er felicity. The materials for an engrossing satirical drama are assuredly as-suredly here. I understand, indeed, that John D. Williams, the young ! producer, is already negotiating with . Bernard Shaw for a satirical comedy dealing with -many of t hese sum characters in approximately th7 same period of their lives. "The Mlsquerader," made by John Hunter Booth from the well-known swift seller of Katherine Cecil Thurston, Thurs-ton, is a workmanlike Job, entirely unpretentious, and should gratify all such persons as go in for the kind of melodrama that relies for its spinal . cajoleries on the ' assumption by its star actor of a dual role. Those protean melodramas are generally successful theatrical things so far aa the public is concerned. From the days of "The Face in the Moonlight," through "Jekyll and Hyde" to "Zenda," they have rarely failed to enchant the crowds. And "The Masquerader" is not at all a bad specimen of the kind. Its story, as many readers of the popular fic- tions recall, has to do with an august member of parliament given to morphine mor-phine taking and with his cousin, his double, who takes his place in public life and upon his death with his wife. Guy B'ates Post presents a telling performance of the double role. The melodrama is unveiled quite honestly as melodrama pure and simple, and, as such, succeeds In its , purpose. It is being shown in the Lyric theater. Old Force Dressed Up. In "The Scrap of Paper," by Owen Davis, out of a periodical serial by A. S. Roche, who have Henry W. Savage's Sav-age's old farce. "The Million," , played with a straight face. The piece ' is the ancient-so-called pursuit farce ' dressed up in cutaway co?,ts and of-offered of-offered as something that should not be laughed at. The important paper that is lost, the chase after it, its ceaseless changing of hands and its eventual recovery, such is the time-honored time-honored conte. Robert Hilliard has the leading part. Miss Carroll Mc-Comas Mc-Comas is the central lady. The thea-ter thea-ter is the Criterion. Already departed these shores is the melodrama called "The Pawn," which served to bring back Mr. Walker Whiteside to the stage of the Fulton. The piece was a melancholy to-do with the Japanese question and was more successful in provoking chuckles than the suspense it aimed at. The absurd contour of the affair was em-y y phasized by the excessively bad act-A Ing of Mr. Whiteside. In the role T'TV a Japanese villain, Whiteside went " through all the conventional tactics of the 10-20-30 stage, all the deep hissing hiss-ing intakes of breath, all the Dr. Munyon gestures and all the elaborate elabor-ate sneakings around the boards that have been identified for counties years with the stage Jap. The deportment and utterance of the actor was burlesque at its finest and this burlesque was made the more pointed by the presence in the cast of six authentic Japanese who italicized ital-icized by contrast the bizarre anti-s of the star mime. The story of the play has to do with the efforts of the Wiiiteside Jap to inveigle an American Amer-ican with Japanese blood in his veins to betray the location of certain island fortifications in the Pacific. It was all very silly. Announced frankly as farce, the play might have enjoyed a greater measure of prosperity. The new- musical comedv is "Rambler "Ram-bler Rose," book by Harry B. Smith, founded on the old Billie Burke comedy com-edy known as "The Runaway," and music by Victor Jacobi. The central players are the ever attractive Julia Sanderson and the comical Joseph Cawthorn. The piece Itself Is of the species long since passed into the discard, dis-card, the species of the musical comedy com-edy day of Kay artists' studios in the Datin quarter and of masked balls tu which the innocent souhrett1 vent disguised as a scarlet danseuse in or- ( der to wean her beloved's affections from the bold houri who threatened t hem. But Miss Sanderson is sufficiently captivating and her colleague, Cawthorn, Caw-thorn, sufficiently funny to make or.6 loiyret these antiques, and the evening eve-ning is so made lo pass it:;reeab!y. Cawthorn's song, written hy In'hic Berlin and calle.l "Poor Little Girl's Dog," In which are relavcd th-t tri'ils of the coddled and nnhanuy Fo-klnese. Fo-klnese. is a droll hit and Miss Sanderson's Sander-son's "Whenever 1 Think of You" is a good sequel to her very populnr "Thev Wouldn't Behove Me" of other days. The humor is of the burlesque show sort, hut Cav;t horn reaiis It with highly comical effect. The chorus girls are of the vintage of "Prliu'cai Bonnie" and "The Little .'ycoou." |
