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Show ! With the First Nighters HS "THE LION AND THE MOUSE." Rftjf I To those managers who have offended art, HSI to those writers who have claimed that their taw- Hi dry plays are what the people want, Charles Klein rojf has made an answer that so completely shatters the flimsy barriers of their arguments that there is Hi nothing left upon which they can rest their case. Kraf They who have complained of the cheapness Hsl of criticism, too obdurate to understand that they IHftj themselves are responsible for it, and incapable of Rjy taking the every day forces In our country and Hkh weaving a story about them, without making It Hfff reek with the filth of the social gutter, can learn Mih a great lesson from "The Lion and the Mouse." H! u The lesson that the people have accepted their I villains and vampires only because they were Hf U theatre hungry and not because they preferred the H$f I demoralizing sort of play. Hf And if Charles Klein and another playwright Hjf I or two can write a few more such plays as "The Hzjf Litin and the Mouse" we can all take heart in the HJf hope that in our own great American life there Hffjf may be found onough material to make even the Htf most pessimistic regain confidence sufficiently to Hgfi believe that a theatre will again mean a palace of art, and that the plays which served to lower the Bjgj stage will be with the winds of yesterday. Hfjf There is another , thing. A few such plays HS generously distributed throughout the country, Bff and in comparison, the vaunted power of the Hjfl press would suffer severely. Hfjl There could be no better influence for good Hy than such a play, good in its effect upon the lay- Htfi man who sees it and good for a stage overbur- P dened with sordid and sensual things. BH Another has said: "Our economic system j doesn't produce the man. It does produce the H9j 1 riches for the man, j but only by virtue of laws Kjf that give him more than the advantage of what- Hjfj ever superiority he may possess in the way of H natural abilities." Klein had something like that DIl in mind in framing the most striking American H character ever seen on the stage. He softens him Hffl in spots, but he Ib yall business as business is de- Hgg fined, in other words the shrewd manipulator who oM by virtue of a little ready cash at the proper time BRl has assumed 'the bogus 'right to squeeze his fellow BHg j man, and in this play of Klein's his fellow man, or Hgf I rather woman has her turn about. KJ A beauty of the -play Is the freedom from ex- aggeration, its lack of types so often crowded upon Bl 1 the scene by many misguided ones is another Hjg strong point in its favor, and the . arrangement Btg leading with brilliant effect to the climaxes is the B work of a man mature indeed in his art. E It is a trifle weak in the beginning, a fact that forces itself upon you as it grows in interest; that H is, one wonders how the author who was responsl- ble for the latter scenes could make the first so WjWj jj lame, but it was better so than had it been the VWj reverse. A striking example of that was seen in HB the Fitchian play of a week ago wherein the end- ing ruined the preceding scenes. RHH The contrast between the iniqultlous systemi- SflK j tizer John Ryder supremely rich and therefore su: ' premely powerful and Shirley Rossmore courag- eous in her poverty and desperately depending on DH her, wits to turn that power, was one which could H&B not have been better drawn in other hands than RB those of Arthur Byron and Gertrude Coghlon. HHj f'f The work of Byron left nothing to be desired, HH f his intensity was, compelling, his life was a stern IHj I reality every minute. iHK And Gertrude Cohglan unaffected, natural, IjHB strong in action and 3peech, a voice perfect in ex- flnl pression but never hysterical, is just about as real HE as people can be on the stage. But who wasn't, in that splendid company Flora Bowley, Grace Thome, Lillian. DIx, Ada Curry, Florence ( Gerald, Edith Shayne, George Parsons, W. H. Burton, Joseph Kilgour, Edward See, P. S. Barrett and the rest. "The Lion and the Mouse" is an American play for Americans based on the forces that permeate the most interesting phase of our national life, and if you haven't seen it, go today. MIYIE. SARAH BERNHARDT. The visit of a great actress of another country is in itself an event, but the coming of Sarah Bernhardt 'to this city obliterates in its importance import-ance all the ordinary and time worn standards used to classify such an occurrence. Mme. Bernhardt is the first actress of France, but so widely spread is her fame and so her art, I she is also the first actress of the world. For, while she has not the interpretative skill the peculiar pecu-liar individual penetration and soulful instinct of Eleanor Duse, her art, being less clouded by the mist that envelopes the spiritually great, is the more universal because of its natural limitations and its human inspiration. Sarah- Bernhardt Is of the people first, a ruler in the kingdom of genius afterward. Her emotions emo-tions are natural emotions, her conceptions reasonable rea-sonable conceptions. Her characterizations, founded first on logic and In nature as she inherently inher-ently feels them, are within the range of the humblest, hum-blest, most thoughtless of players, because they do not transcend the natural and the logical. She is a great actress in the broadest and surest sur-est meaning of that term. She personates women wo-men of passion, women of tragic lives, women moved 'to heroic tasks through love or jealousy, self-sacrifice or revenge. 3he acts these characters. charac-ters. She searches out the fundamental laws of their creation, and builds conception therefrom. Psychology interests her only in so far as it is herself applicable to the women she understands. And it Is because she has confined herself primarily pri-marily to characters well within her range, mentally men-tally and artistically, that she does stand as the first actress of the world. She was born in the Latin quarter of Paris, the daughter of a poor dressmaker. She has risen by the force of the genius that is hers to great heights. At the age of Gl she is supreme in the delineation of those roles which she has made her own, and, if we can believe the critics of her own country, at once the most just and the most severe, she has escaped es-caped to a wonderful extent the halting finger of age. The particular importance of her engagements lies in the fact that it is the last of her American I tours. In this instance the word farewell may be I used advisedly, though it has often heretofore fall- I en among thieves. We would have laughed heart- I ily had any one suggetsed that Sir Henry Irving I was saying good-by two years ago in Illinois. We I did laugh when Joseph Jefferson joked between I .nets in Powers' a year ago concerning the efforts of the newspapers to retire him. Mme. Bernhardt is a wonderful woman, as well as a wonderful actress, and there aro likely many years of abundant life before her. But it is still well that we do seriously consider this her farewell to America, for it is not probable that she will come again. c 1$ THAT THIRD ACT. I When Clyde Fitch wrote the memorable third act 'in "The Woman in 'the Case," he must have !hn" in rmind just some such accomplished actress as Helen Ware, who was the Claire Foster of the production. The way she Went through the bibulous bibu-lous stage of the scene until she reached the, climax cli-max by revealing the secret of her lover's death, -was as finished a piece of histrionic art as has been seen on the local stage during many seasons. sea-sons. The portraiture required rare delicacy, and it was done .with consummate skill. At first obdurate, obdu-rate, suspicious, and cautious of her secret of contemplated revenge, she gradually became more .garrulous, and when she finally told the frenzied -woman beside her that, her lover had committed suicide, it was in the midst of the most realistic sobs of sdlf-pity and in the full hiatus of inebriation, inebria-tion, wonderfully portrayed. In, this scene she was easily the central figure, a fact of which Miss Walsh seemed to be perfectly aware when both responded 'to numerous curtain calls. , ieT tS NEW DESCRIPTION OF BERNHARDT. Hap Ward, the star of "The Grafter" company, bad Sarah Bernhardt as a rival attraction during one of his engagements this season. The next morning he met a friend of his, a genial horseman, horse-man, who is also a great lover of the theatre, and the following conversation took place: Genial Horseman "I saw that French woman, Bernhardt, last night. Ward "How did you like her?" G. H. "She was great!" Ward "Great was she? -in what way?" G. H. "Oh she was simply great!" Ward "But can't you give me some Idea of her acting?" G. H. "Why see here, you've been to a horse race, haven't you?" Ward "Yes, often." G. H. "Well, you've seen a fine looking mare step on to the track, holding her head high and making a picture it does your eyes good to see, and when she starts she does her mile in 2.30. Well, that's an American actress. Pretty soon some fel-. Tow drives a lean looking black filly on to the track. She's not handsome to look at, but she does her mile without a break in 2:06. Well, thaf s Bernhardt." & 5C j A REMARABLE RECORD. "Forty-five Minutes From Broadway," with Fay Templetbn, brought its remarably successful engagement en-gagement to a close at the New Amsterdam thea tre in New York the other night, to make room for the eminent actor, Richard Mansfield. No other New York theatre being available at present to continue the run of "Forty-five Minutes From Broadway" the management have decided to drop over to Philadelphia for two weeks at the Chestnut Street Opera house, from there to Boston Bos-ton for the balance of this season and the entire summer It is estimated that at the termination of the coming Chicago engagement this remarkable Cohan Co-han comedy will have played to gross receipts of ?1,000,000. |
