OCR Text |
Show THE CITIZEN 10 With The First Nighters drama at its zenith is EMOTIONAL of Bronze, playing at the Salt Lake theatre this week. It is the strongest play and the strongest company of the season. The play by Paul Kistermarcker and to Eugene Delard has been adapted the needs of our stage by Paul Kester, who has given Miss Anglin a role which enables her to display her marvelous powers of emotional acting and a technique which is almost flawless. Leonard Hunt, an American sculptor, has entered an international competition for a memorial which shall express the spirit of Victory that won the great war for human liberty. He and Vivian Hunt (Miss Anglin) have been ideally happy as man and wife and she is absorbed almost to the point of worship in her husbands work Her love is more than worship. Into this home, while the artist is striving for the prize, come Reginald Morton, a bounder, and Sylvia, his daughter, who is a violin virtuoso. They are relatives of Vivian Hunt. Outstaying his welcome, Morton has made himself offensive to both husband and wife, and Sylvia, alas, has fallen in love with the sculptor. As the play opens a war relief entertainment and musical is being given at the Hunt home. Sylvia is the star of the occasion. That night Paddy Riggs, an old friend of the Hunts, proposes to her; a millionaire insults her and she, when the guests are gone, throws herself into the arms of the artist. As they embrace they are seen by the devoted wife, who coolly invites them to supper. The succeeding months are full of agony for the wife who wishes to save her husband, keep him for herself and bring him triumph in the competition. All the time her heart is breaking because she knows that he and Sylvia, who, meantime, has taken an apartment with her father, are meeting clandestinely. Indeed, one night she traces them to their meeting place and she returns home with vengeance in her heart. On the following night her home is again invaded by visitors who come to crown the sculptors statue of Victory, which somehow refuses to be created. The form of the woman has been perfected, but the face is still a blank. The artist cannot express himself, for life has become carnal and he must have a spiritual face to visualize the spirit of Victory. The big scene is at this crisis. In fact, emotional acting seldom reaches the height to which Miss Anglin attains in this scene. Her heart seething with wounded pride, with anger and shame and even Impulses to murder, Bhe welcomes her guests and attempts to appear gay. While the guests entertain themselves with song, laughter, dancing and merry quips, she, seated on a divan, pours out her story to Paddy Riggs, occasionally turning to respond brightly and with apparently joyousness to some gay sally of a guest. Sylvia arrives and kisses her, but. still she maintains her composure and somehow gets through the dreadful evening. Meanwhile there has been a scene involving the sculptor, Sylvia, and the millionaire who covets Sylvia. It ends with Sylvia swooning on a divan and the dismissal of the magnate. Vivian overhears her husband telling Sylvia that they will quit the house that night. Overcome by her great love, she abases herself and weeping and almost raving, implores her husband not to desert her. The last act brings the recreant artist back to his home, hoping for forgiveness. Sylvias child has died; she has gone .back to her father, knowing that the artist does not really love her. The forgiveness is granted, but not in the way the sculptor had hoped. Love has suffered too much and has died; only pity is left. The possibilities of the plot are obvious and the playwrights have made the most of them. To say that Miss Anglin misses no opportunity presented to her by the dramatists is to unde- her triumph. She supernal-ize- s each big scene and is assisted with power and artistry by Fred Eric r-state as Leonard Hunt. bills are so good SOME vaudeville reviewer is disinclined to the descend to details. Such is this weeks bill at the Orpheum. Over and above the merit of each act there is if a general atmosphere of class, you know what I mean. It is like that aura, or emanation of light, which the spiritists tell us envelop every human body. The aura of the Orpheum perand gay. formance is The Marmein sisters and David Schooler give a performance of dance and music that carries you into the realm of high art. Schooler is a wonderful pianist with fingers like steel ramrods. This enables him to secure effects reminiscent of Paderewski. He is even more entertaining in the lighter strains and he accompanies his playing with a patter of verse that is quite attractive. His rhymed couplets are used also to introduce various dances by the Marmein sisters. Virginia Rye is the name of a horse with a kick. It has the color and the general appearance of the Virginia Rye you once passed congenial hours with as you stood with your foot on the rail in some palatial stable. To be less obscure, it is a bottle of whiskey which two young people, who are dead broke, find in an office desk. To pay the rent and get married they decide to turn bootleggers, with the multi-colore- d a, result that they finally acquire dozen bottles on which to begin their married life in a dreary world of prohibition and influenza. The Four Readings does not refer to mind readers or readings from the elder dramatists. The Readings are marvellous acrobats who juggle one another around in a novel and thrilling fashion. The Lachmann Sisters are two juveniles who have acquired some fascinating stage wayB and have varied talents in singing and dancing. Pietro, the accordeonist, is thought so well of by everybody and everybody has heard him and he thinks so well of himself apparently that he needs no publicity here. He is the master player of ragtime and jazz on the piano accordeon. Felix Bernard and Jack Duffy are Darden-ella- , jazz hounds. Felix wrote that insidious and insinuating piece of jazz harmony that has everyFelix body shaking a mean foot. at most of the piano the presides time, but occasionally is inspired to arise and take a hop or two with Jack. In fact, they look as if they might like to take hops any old time. Nat Nazarro is a precocious lad who brings with him his own jazz band, the members of which are Atlantic fleet sailors. Nat leads the orchestra with his hands and his feet, which is to say that he directs as much by dancing as by manipulating the baton. $' PANTAGES unalloyed mixture of joy as ANtypified in the bill now playing at Pantages is drawing vaudeville devotees toward the popular playhouse, and especially those enjoying the atmosphere of a circus, for this weeks show is strongly redolent of the good old circus days minus the pink Robinson's Military elephants have feats that catch the fancy of the house. The big animals come in as Red Cross workers, rescuing wounded soldiers from the battlefield and have other military stunts that bring applause. The Novelle Brothers emphasize the circus atmosphere with their musical tumbling and convulse the house with their imitation of two loving birds. John T. Ray and company have a farcical dance offering that is well received, while Harry and Nancy Cavana In "A Free Exhibition give a lively display of slack wire feats. Then there are the Gibson Sisters and Genevieve Mier who have some dainty dances that go well. A photoplay comedy of laughing proportions and Eddie Fitzpatricks excellent musical score are other catchy features of this bill, which will play through Tuesday night. Eddie Foy and the whole Foy family will make another trip to Salt Lake, this time greeting friends from behind the Pantages footlights when they open & |