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Show r ' " v . - ". ' ' : . '. ( f 1 x k s IWiiliBili Mmmsmam Harold Bauer, one of the world's greatest pianists, who comes to the tabernacle tab-ernacle Monday, January 14, under the auspices of the Musical Arts society. ' j dfUimiifM&i QPiaforniA By GEORGE JEAN NATHAN.. DOWN in Twenty-seventh street east, in his miniature Bram-hall Bram-hall playhouse, M. Butler Davenport Dav-enport is up to it again. Once or twice every year, you may recall, this M. Davenport straps back the flaps of his sideshow tent and exposes to the public eye some new freak of his personal manufacture. This freak Is generallv a drame which labors assiduously to be shocking and naughty and succeeds finally in being approximately as shocking as a discontented discon-tented curling iron and as naughty as a Chautauqua charade. But M. Davenport is never downhearted. down-hearted. When one season passes and he finds that his plav has not even managed to bring a blush to the cheek of the most comradely deadhead, dead-head, he sets himself promptly to the composition of another. And when, in turn, this opus fails similarly to elicit so much as a gosh from some stray yokel who has wandered into M. Davenport's Dav-enport's bizarre playhouse in the belief be-lief that it was a restaurant, he loses no time in reading up Benvenuto Cellini, Cel-lini, Elinor Glyn, Margaret of Navarre Na-varre and "Snappy stories" and negotiating ne-gotiating a piping-hot new one. bay what you will against the results re-sults of his labors, the fellow is steadfast stead-fast and indefatigable. If he does not lose faith in himseir, it is therefore there-fore possible that in time it mav be twenty years, it may be thirtv he (T!ayy.et brew a Pce that will 'fulfill ins melons ambition and scandalize the Sunday school superintendents almost al-most as much as they were scandalized scandal-ized twenty-five years ago when - harmion. the trapeze belle, pulled off a pink silk garter and threw it into the audience. Latest Antic Shown. The, latest untie 0f our devilish friond is named "The Siient Assertion, Asser-tion, and, as in (he instance of his numerous prevenient offerings the to-do is with Commandment YJJ it HonTh 1,01(1 fri?nr,"s conten-'" conten-'" th.at nian wife and his inamo-ata inamo-ata shoud pretend in public that' they are the bfst of friends, so that hp ylh ree.r.may not suffer from the tou.-h of whispered scandal. Tin's philosophy our diabolic one expounds uith ail tnc eloquence of a Connecticut Connecti-cut Rochefoucauld. The work i interpreted in-terpreted .by a companv of six or o?VthJaile'S ?cmlemen whom one SLthC.,New lork daiIv newspapers, fo'racio,". re'Jab,e gaZCUe' Si?- ntarr f the r-orly-eihth Mieet theater is currently occupied hv a melodrama given the title "Yes or No from the studio of Arthur Goodrich The exhibit is st lV another an-other of the derivatives of "On Tital, and essays to substitute the dramatic lechnique of jesc J ikv for I hat of Arthur Pinero ln terms of the motion picture and upon a stage set with a double scene the halves of which are alternate'lv -lummatPd and darkened, thore is ,,. ennri ',ierUStuni:1ry sril,d-v cinema nh ,f . h ynunr IT1-1,T woman , about to go astray with the brunette Dothario, with Iipi- old auntie overhearing over-hearing the plans from behind the convenient palm and dissuadin- her thronsrn the nnrration of the storv ol her own melaneholious life. Play Within Play. The telling of- Auntie's storv con-stitu'es con-stitu'es the play within the p'av A se Auntie, now ;t red-handed and lively sweetmeal. givin- 0ar to the hot platitudes of the sinister brunette deserting her hardworking husband' nmnmq: oft with i!:e handsome br , evil one and being presently deserted by the knave and left to face the cruel and jeering world alone. Meanwhile, Mean-while, in the other half of the scene, we sec another wife col ncid en tally putting her lingers in her ears when a Don .1 tian proceeds to the rough stuff, proclaiming to him that she will never desert her dear, hardworking husband, and being presently discovered discov-ered a happy and contented woman, with numerous children. The telling of this duplex lale over, the scene switches lo the picture of the prologue and the youna married woman, tear-stained from listening to the sad story of Auntie's hfe. makes a face registering "seeing the light" and imperiously bids her would-be seducer se-ducer go lo. The play is perfectly obvious at all points and is composed chiefly in the Theodore Kremr literary key. Miss Willette Kershaw is the aberrant . Auntie who tells the story of her own erring youth.; Miss Emilie Polini is the pure wife, who puts her fingers in her ears; Miss Marjorie Wood is the slangy comic relief ; the Messrs. Frank Wilcox. Robert Kelly and Irving Ir-ving Dillon are the three hard-working husbands; and the Messrs. Kal-man Kal-man Matus. Byron Keasley and Malcolm Mal-colm Duncan the trio of 'boudoir boa-constrictors. boa-constrictors. The acting is vastly ( better than the play, Miss Polini in particular giving a performance of merit. Newest Music Shows. The two newest music vdiows are "Words a nd Music" a t the Fulton and "Flo-Flo" at the Cort. All the amusement that may not be discovered discov-ered in the latter may be found in the former. Built after the pattern of "Hitchy-Koo" and fostered by the same Raymond Hitchcock, the affair is an amiable two hours of saucy badinage bad-inage and ragtime, garnished with an appropriately pinchable quota of poussins. Richard Carle is here the ringmaster in Hitchcock's place. "Flo- Flo." to the contrary, is a poor Columbia theater burlesque show offered at the $2 scale. Fashioned Fash-ioned out of a vaudeville act known-as known-as "The Bride Shop," the piece reveals re-veals in music show shape much the same sort of thing our friend Davenport Daven-port strives for in dramatic. Aiming Aim-ing at the smartly risque, the show contrives in the main to be merely leering. The performers are of the vaudeville stamp, and the tunes by Silvio Hein are flat and tinny. The entertainment in the cocoa nut grove at the Century theater bears this year the title "A Night In .Spain." Cathered together are the star senor-itas senor-itas of "The T.and of Joy" company, a nd the result, as might have been expected, is precisely the sort of thing best suited to the midnight cabaret. The Spanish dances and Uie melodies of the engaging Val-verde, Val-verde, already described in this quarter, quar-ter, fit ideally into such a scheme as that of tiie coeoanut grove, and provide pro-vide an excellent a nd highly to be recommended liqueur after an evening spent in such a theater as the Vleux Colombier before Copeau's presentation presenta-tion of De Musset's pretty, but so pallid .and bygone. "Barbarinc-." ; All the exhilaration that one is supposed sup-posed to get in the playhouse and j does not get in sueh an instance as ' the lat ter is vouchsafed in such an instance as the former. Here we find what is probably after all the true function of the theater functioning to its fullest. Life, color, gaiety, passion, taste, movement, music you will en -rage them all atop this roof. One such exhibit actually does more to nourish the theater and to curry it to its eventual bloom than any half-dozen precious bouts with the literatures of the yesterdays. |
