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Show j H LATEST CLYDE FITCH PLAY. B "The Coronet of a Duchess" Fiercely Scored. B It is cheering to read a vigorous orltioism on Bli some of the stage rot palmed off on New York. IKij' The New York Sun says: m( I In hor most daring moment Miss Laura Jean B j Libbey, emotional novelist, never drew more lurid Bi. ' and impossible pictures of American and English Bfiij life than were furnished at the Garrick by Clyde rijl Fitch last night in his new play "The Coronet of HJl the Duchess." Rarely has an audience left a HfO theater more thoroughly disappointed, not with HKp tne nlay aloQ but w-tn the author thereof, for H even the wildest and most highfalutin melodrama H on Third avenue contains no scene to equal some H of the absurdities of incident and caricature which H Mr. Fitch gave a sane audience to swallow. As H. for the star, Mrs. Bloodgood, she acted from the Hu outset like a woman with a broken heart, a hero- K; ine who realises that she was leading a forlorn j hope. She gave many clever little touches here and thero, but th big scene of the play where the Duchess and Duke in all the glory of their court robes have a most unducal row-de-dow, in which the Duchess entreats her worst half to strike her In order that she may have good grounds for a .divorce hero Mrs. Bloodgood fell down completely. She played entirely on one key and neither her outraged dignity nor her pathos was in the least convincing. In one sense she was not at fault. Just as in "Major Andre" Mr. Fitch made his hero do an impossible act for which the audience could never forgive him, so at the outset of "The Coronet" he slaughters what chances the heroine might have had for sympathy by making the American girl marry the Duke In cold Hood. The girl admits that they are not in love with each other, and then, later on when she finds out that he is fond of a handsomer hand-somer girl, she grows hysterical, turns for consolation con-solation to the sturdy American whom she had originally turned down without a qualm-, and finally after discovering at a charity bazar that the Duke has given one strand of her pearl necklace to his mistress, she Implores him to please hit her in the neck, in the eye, anywhere, so that she can get free from him and marry Jim. And that's the lady that Mr. Fitch is hoping that New York audiences are going to crQWd to see and weep over! Oh, no! There is a limit to everything, and in the ridiculous manner in which he handled both his English and American characters Mr. Fitoh must have exhausted the patience of even his warmest admirers. TJnspeitably vile as he made the English Duke, this type was no worse in its way than the sketch of the American Ingenue In-genue which he offered. This character, most cleverly played by MIsb Georgie Mendum, was made by Mr. Fitch in speech and manner tougher than any woman who walked the Bowery; but she was supposed to represent the fine, pure, broezy American type, one of the nuggets of pure gold and unalloyed sentiment in this mess of paste emotions and bloodless hearts. And yet this pure and sweet young creature comes to the great charity char-ity bazar in London and informs the Dowager Duchess of Sundun that she has obtained the very pretty hat she is wearing by "picking up" an Englishman Eng-lishman in front of a shop in the Burlington Ar- cade, and "jollying" him along until he bought it for her. In a later act they have their great fight with all their tbgs on. But long before this unqensa-tlonal unqensa-tlonal sensation comes the play has sunk deep into the slough of despond. As a play, "The Coronet of the Duchess" lacks deftness in any way, and as far as its construction goes it might be the work of the merest novice. But it is the unspeakable vulgarity of the whole affair which "wrought its failure last night. |
