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Show III ill e tOith the Fir4?t JSfighter. Ne II Jjj THE TAMING OF HELEN. I I, ! A little reflection of Post Wheeler's runs: I I !' "Whe'n a rich girl has Icinky blaclc hair it is called f 1 , 'rippling midnight.' " Miss Martha Waldron is a I i rich girl, with loads of money. It is said that her fa I ' people in Boston object to her choosing a career. I on the stage, and if such is the case, they use H ft I j I rard judgment. H I j L ' ' No actor, no playwright has any right in the 1 I I ' world to work on an audience with eloquent de Hjf j I' ' scription of the girl he is in love with, and then H' f ' I spring a Miss Waldron for instance. H- f "The lady has a certain charm, brought about H ' f by her acting, mayhap, but the roaring under- K , 1 1 i : v tone that swept the house upon her first appear- B I . ance was enough for her, and for Mr. Miller to H f ; i t, i know that she would not do. Really, I felt sorry B I! L ' for the girl. A woman may be a keen actress, B If I i ; ut if an audience does not know her, and she m Ij i appears, looking as fierce in face and figure as M j f 1 Mlss Waldron, after her lover has lauded her to Bj I tm such an extent that beside her "Venus would look M' il i like a selling plater, she should take to heart Hf ' I the old saying of the failure, who before she went i 'IIs on saI(1: "I,m crazy to S on tue stage." B f,r I "The Taming of Helen" is xo more than Mr. B , ' f Miller claims it to be, a little love story. There B ,$' ; is nothing great about it, in fact it is a mixture B ' ' of the exaggerated and commonplace, and it is not B l j; ' strange that it was not a great success even with B 1 a sood. company. And Mr. Miller's company is B )' not good. It cannot compare with any preceding B l! ! company he ever brought west, und with the ex- B I , ;' ' ception of Miss Anglln, of course, and Morton B y ; ' ! '; Selten, it does not compare favorably with the B j i j' average stock at a fifty-cent house. H ' ' ' The plot is rather new (a great deal" to say B ' M jf now days), some of the situations are pleasing, B ; and at times the lines fairly scintillate. B l It is worth a few minutes' time in the sum- B I i mer, but all in all there is really nothing to the 111 ' 1lay- B i h f An awfully exaggerated stunt was Miller's B '! E?jl dash for the supper room, and Anglin's flight to fl I 1 1 1 the Liverpool station to push back the water and Bj 'Al stop the boat was as melodramatic as a Lincoln Bj 1 1 p I j.. Carter situation. Mr. Miller was splendid, he is B (III" one of the best lovers on the stage, and Miss Bj t -. Anglin is the same sweet, versatile actress as B It i ever. If anything, a little improved by her ad- B '!lV ditional weight. B (1,(11 Mr. Selten's Reginald Herbert was a gem, but Hj . m if !' for the rest, very, very little. San Francisco loves H Mil Miller and Anglin, but if it can stand for the peo- i II M ' pie with them, it is truly a jay town. LH ! ' r . & 5 O B jij ! ! "THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLE." B jl t The happiest part of the "Devil's Disciple" H ' I j i was the fact that it was the first appearance of H If . the play here. The reason the Miller-Anglin peo- H r ' j ! pie should try it on the dog is a trifle vague, but B ' ' ' they did it, and the dog stood still. The play is H n if a freaky affair with a finish absolutely foolish, and H ' ijfl' it was not benefited any by a company that had H 'Hi to be prompted from start to finish. And at B pf : that, the whole company, stars and all, who would H j 6 Hi pace up and down, waiting for a prompter or a re- H ;;;! peated cue. H I 1 1 ) Miss Anglin is so real and so perfect in her H' I; j artistic work that her part of the performance H ' gave the only real charm to the play. H -( ill Miss Kulp's Essie was a difficult bit well done, B j jfj and Morton Selten's Burgoyne was extremely iB 1 clever. H , T A most trying part, on the audience, was the H Id Mrs. Dudgeon of Mrs. Kate Pattison-Selten. It HBt' '111 " was a character part, that of an embittered, nay- HB "Ml row and selfish old woman, and no one could have B, -1 M made more of a mess of the part. It isn't pleasant to have to say such things of a company that should be perfect, but Mr. Miller is too fine an actor and too keen an observe? not to know what he is carrying. & S THE JOSE MINSTRELS. Why do so many men and women on the stage get ambitious as soon as they get a fat part? Is the graft so good, or is their thirst for artistic success insatiable? Poor deluded Dickey Jose that is, poor and deluded if he thinks he has a show. Dickey Jose, "America's wonderful contra-tenor." Sure, and very applatidable if he is singing his little song with a good show, but "The Richard Rich-ard J. Jose minstrels" well, not if we see them first. If this big, good-natured, good-voiced, good fellow Josq has the temerity to hurl such a bunch of fatters at Salt Lake Theater audiences, for five performances, he has nerve enough to make a great success. There are two bright spots in the bunch Jose and McDonald,' but it would take vastly more than them to compensate for the fierce gags, worse stunts and threadbare songs. All in all a fiercer company s seldom seen on the stage unless it is going from Challis to Black-foot Black-foot and particularly noticeable for their ability to bore, were Frank Cushman and "Dutch" Wal-ton. Wal-ton. They are probably the worst actorines that have ever been passed to us, and the Lord help the next similar pair that butts in. In the meantime it may be interesting for Bndman Billy Mack to learn tbn.t of the company he is not the only "Jonah Man." And did you see the gush in the dailies about this rotten show? Such absurd criticisms are just a reminder of the kind we got all last winter, and they serve notice that there is no dependence to be placed on their notices of theatrical attractions the coming season. sea-son. Anything and everything is excellent if the advertising amounts' to enough, and really there is no reason for the daily "critics" seeing a performance, per-formance, for one stereotyped plate could serve nicely during the entire season, and be even more economical than the present system. tjJ ? , What an improvement the program at the Theater the past week were over the blanket sheet bundles that are usually passed to you at the door? The padded program nuisance is not allowed in any city theater, and it would be well if such bills as those of the past week were made permanent. per-manent. "A Friend of The Family" comes to the Theater The-ater September 5th. There will be nothing until that date. t,y "IS ACTING AN ART?" The English papers and periodicals recently have been discussing the question: "Is Acting an Art?" The pros and -cons have been set forth at more or less length by London's leading critics and actors. The most vigorous champion of the artistry of the actor has bee Sir Charles Wynd-ham, Wynd-ham, whose friends think he has had the best of the argument. Now the American actor is having hav-ing his say so. E. H. Sothern recently discussed the question in the New York Morning Telegraph, quoting at length from Victor Hugo and Tolstoi and adding some pregnant sentences of his own. Tolstoi's definition of art seems surely to grasp the entire subject: "To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced ex-perienced (or imagined) and" having evoked It in himself, 'then by means of movements, lines, colors, col-ors, sounds or forms expresed In words as to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling this is the acting of art." With this quotation as his text Mr. Sothern adds: "Once when correcting a pupil's study, Bruloff just touched it in a few places and the poor, dead study immediately became animated." "Why, you only touched it a 'wee bit,' and it is quite another thing." "Art begins where the 'wee bit1 begins," said Bruloff. "It is the same in all art a 'wee bit' weaker or stronger in intonation or a 'wee bit' sooner or later in dramatic art and there is no contagion. "No school can teach feeling in a man. And still less can it teach him to manifest it in one particular manner natural to him alone. But the essence of art lies in these things. "The one thing that schools can teach is how to transmit feelings experienced by other artists in the way those other artists transmitted them. And this is what they do teach: "In dramatic schools the pupils are taught to recite monologues, just as tragedians considered celebrated declaimed them. And, therefore, schools may teach what is necessary to produce something resembling art, but not art itself. The teaching of the schools stops where the 'wee bit' begins." You ask me, "If the art of acting is imitative?" Surely. The actor must take nature for his model. Art is as natural as nature." You ask "if the actor creates." Surely, when an actor reaches the ideal of the author (admitting that the author has an ideal) by embodying the character, char-acter, by enabling the audience to feel as he has learned to feelhe creates as well as the writer. 3? tf jr Charles Frohman is to make a star of Fay Pavis, who made such a distinct hit in, "Imprudence" "Impru-dence" last season. George Fleming's dramatization dramatiza-tion of "Lady Rose's Daughter" has been accept-Ied, accept-Ied, and to Miss Davis has been intrusted the title role. The book has had an immense sale in this country, -and many are of the opinion that Miss Davis is an ideal actress for the role. She will naturally appear in New York at a date to be decided de-cided upon when Mr. Frohman returns. O O v The first act of Mile. Napoleon, the play which is being written for Anna Held by Jean Richpin, author of "Du Barry," and adapted by Joseph Herbert, Her-bert, was brought to New York from Paris recently. re-cently. Gustav Luders, the well-known composer of "The Burgomaster," "King Dodo" and "The Prince of Pilsen," is now engaged in writing the score of this new comedy. Manager Ziegfield promises a production that will in every way eclipse the famous "Little Duchess." fcy There have been many "lightning change artists" ar-tists" on the stage, but the palm must be awarded to Mr. Walker Whiteside, wbo presents during the coming season Lieutenant Gordon Kean's comedy, "We Are King." Mr. Whiteside plays a dual role. His chanr s from one role to the other must be made within five seconds and they are complete from head to foot. The services of six men working simultaneously are required to assist as-sist the star in each of his changes, and ten duplicate dupli-cate costumes are nedessary to complete the illusion. il-lusion. ( i&fr 5 There is a special pathos about the report recently re-cently cabled from England that the baby daugh- ter of Forbes Robertson and his American wife, Gertrude Elliott, has lost her eyesight. It will H be remembered the child's parents have won dur-H dur-H ing the past season the supreme theatrical suc-I suc-I cess of their lives in the presentation of "The i Light That Failed," Kipling's story of the terror I of blindness. The wit of George Bernard Shaw, the brilliant and eccentric dramatist and critic, would have routed the London boors on one occasion if the boors had been intelligent enough to understand under-stand it. It happened at the first London performance of Mr. Shaw's comedy, "Arras and the Man," which Mr. Mansfield presented in this country. At the fall of the curtain there were clamorous calls for the author, to which Mr. Shaw was at length induced to respond. The audience was still cheering, but there was one dissentient in the gallery, who was "booing" with the full power of a pair of very strong lungs. Mr. Shaw looked up at the disturber, and said very seriously: "Yes, sir; I quite agree with you; but what can we two do against a whole house full?" |