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Show The Spell Of The Passion Play IT is said that the Passion Play has drawn thousands thou-sands of people from tlie United States this year, and that the great amphitheatre in which it is being performed is crowded to the limit at each performance. The play is a survival of and Improvement on a play that was performed in Medieval Europe hundreds of years ago. We j suspect the charm of it and the reverence for it j do not come from any literary excellence attach- I ing to It, or from the masterful acting that ac- i companies its performance, but because it en- j ables the attendant who watches it, to feel that j he or she Is, while it lasts, living amidst the years in which culminated an epoch the most momentous in the world's history. Of course, the actors assuming the roles of the real actors in that ancient, mighty tragedy help the Illusion, Illu-sion, and it seemsto us the play 3hould be most suggestive to playwrights. Antony anff Cleopatra Cleo-patra is a play that draws great audiences, solely sole-ly because of its appeals to the imaginations of theatre goers. History pictures Cleopatra as f the most fascinating of women, and Antony as a man who was willing to throw a world away for the enchantments of one woman, and while the play moves on, it is easy to forget that one is living in the fourteenth ward of prosaic Salt Lake, and he is transported back two thousand years. The star is for the moment the real Egyptian sorceress, every Bupe that has on a tin breastplate is one of the terrible soldiers that made up the serried legions of old Rome. Our own country is too young to fill the needs of the dramatist; too young for historical plays; but we would think that a man like Frohman could go to Germany, take in that performance of the Passion Play, and then present something on this side that would draw the crowd this way across the sea. |