The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1888-12-16
Little Puck, Vice Versa and
Frank Daniels.
CRINKLE ON CAPTAIN SWIFT,
Events of the Week-Chrfstmas and
New Year's-Latest Notes From
All Cuarterb.


that Vice Versa and Anstey's other
novel A Fallen Idol, from the motive
which makes up Frank Daniels Little
Puck-to go s,raightway and buy the
lest seat they can obtain. Such as
have not will kindly take our word for
it that Vice Versa is one of the anus
ingly clever things of the age and if
Daniels adaptor mas only been success
ful in transferring the spirit of the
novel to the stage-Frank Daniels has
his fortune.
Daniels himself needs no better intro
duction to the Salt Lake public. His
sproarious work as Old Sport gave him
a passport to all our hearts months
ago, and we feel sure his one nights
visit, Wednesday evening, Will be made
to partake of the nature OF most
pleasant ard profitable reunion. The
Daily follow Mr.. Daniels.
The childrens' ball, with the fairy
fountain, and the Christmas night ball
at the Theatre, with the Christmas
night ball at the Grand, are the only
amusemeuts for Yule Tide The
Stephens Opera Company has hit it
lucky in securing New Years Day,
which had been long reserved for Lydia
Thompsou's British burlesque troupe
WHY they have given it up we are not
told-and the revival of the Bohemian
Girl is set for the afternoon aad even
ing of January 1st, in place of the mid
week between the two holidays. 1t will,
without doubt, be a grand and gala oc-
casion.
Captain Swift, the new play over
which the Madison Square players were
so full of anticipation in this city, has
been produced. 1t seems to have made
q strong hit, but evidently has not
pleased Nym Crinkle so much as it has
the public. He thus discourses upon
it:
please me. I have to confess that it
disappointed me and WeaTied me. In
the first place the motive of the story
is a disagreeable one. 1t is the fateful
element automatically handled.
An Legitimate son suffers for the
mistake or the sin Of a mother. There
is no good philosophical reason why he
should, and the social reason is badly
shown. He goes, or is sent away to
Australia, and comes back a man
twenty-five years old at the opening
of the story, under an alias, and enters
unWittingly his mothers household.
Everybody is suspicious of him except
q neice of his mothsr's, who loves him
on the Desdemona principle-tor the
dangers he has passed. As his mother
is now reputably married and with a
family around her, and as she suspects
at once that he is her long lost son, her
trouble begins Immediately.
We watch this fellow with consider
able interest through one or two acts,
for the simple reason that we suspect he
is going to turn out to be good deal
more of hero than criminal. But he
doesn't. His career is uneVentfully vul-
gar and commonplace. After making
love, worrying his mother and giving
much promise OF doing something
manly, the police capture him and the
curtain falls.
Doubtless this is about the way ro-
nance ends in the police court. But it
is hardly worth while to go to Mr.. r.
Haddon Chambers, Esquire, to get a
police court transcript of life. The stage
isn't built for these oalendars-it is
built for romance.
Audiences are not interested in the
misfortunes of criminals unless there is
he. struggle of some sort, and the
mother who announces in the bosom of
her family before the first act is over
that curing her early career she was
chiefly distinguished by her lapse from
virtue, is getting to be something of 8
bore.
OF course she always makes newt
able the misery of meeting "the fruit;
of her sin''-I believe that is the stan
dard expression-and Mrs. Booth has
to go through with that old agony II
this play. There are a great many
"My Gods aud Must l live to se'
this infamy perpetrated," and my
crime is laid at my own doors" anC
such like compunctions; but they NJ
servers. The benevolent injunction
upon all discreet lips is, "Oh, go hid
yourself."
tell you it takes considerable dra
matte power to make sin tolerable OF
the boards nowadays. We've had 81
much of the patent thing.
I suppose Captain Swift can be callet
an example of what the police cal
working up case" But it cannot b.
called, in the language of dramatlsts
working up romance.
One doesn't Ire to study the Nemesi
Of crime in a comedy. One doesn't car
to bother with love and elegance whel
they are merely used to punish a MAJ
for robbing a bank. One doesn't fee
much sympathy for the hero, who not
Withstanding all his good qualities is a
themercy continually of any policeman
Crime of any degree is Iegitimat
material for dramatist, but it must nc
be made the one thing dominant in tn
story, 1t must not be introduced int
poetry or drama to run its inevitabl
iog trot against society and h
merely manacled in the last &C
The ethical point of this pal
ticular kind of play is pueril
It is nothing more nor less than THU
That certain men are toredocmed
misery and crime by their mothers. :.
Mr.. Wilding, of this drama, is illegll
mate. So is his logic. 1t is pagE
fallacy to transfer the responsibility
fine child to the parents and then de