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Show "LITTLE JOHNNIE JONES." When the plot in a comic opera or a musical comedy is lost ten minutes after the curtain rises, the loss weakens the effect, and that is one reason why "Little Johnnie Jones" is of peculiar interest among musical comedies. The plot is there every minutu.almost melodramatic in intensity, and in the whirl occasioned by wit, and song and dance, and the beauty of stage pictures, that plot doesn't get aay. ' I And then "there's The Unknown, as remarkable bit of character work as there is on the stage. A new drunk with a perfect still, an old character but one never before seen behind the footlights, and Tom Lewis is the show. No man on earth ever had fatter lines, and his method of getting rid of them was eo uniquely natural nat-ural that he captivated everyone. He made a gem of "23," and demonslrated that there, is always something new under the calcium ; suns if the man who knows how happens to fall , . in with the1 fellow who can write it. The perfect stage management of "Johnnie" whirled this Cohan success along at a gait that made you dizzy. It was like a three-ring circus, with no encores, but who would have such a live show any other way! " . The songs are great, the staging superb, and the only slight disappointments in the cast were the faces on the chorus, and Bobbie Barry. His g n- . ger was there, but he is not a real imitation of Cohan, and his mimicry of Arthur Dunn might ba better with a little humor attached. But "Johnnie" is a good show, beautifully staged, and we can stand a whole lot more cf th3 Cohan brand of originality. |