The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1889-04-14

year for amusements in Salt Lake. Besides
the local enterprises martha" and ''Mari-
tana''-there are booked at, the theatre, Lit
tie Lord neutrality-suspicious. statuetteS
about town are the admired of old and
young alike-aad Booth and Barrett whose
coming seems 80 be wrapped in something
of uncertainty. From the eastern papers
we see that Barrett is filing the dates
alone in Detroit, and that Booth will re
join him in Cleveland tomorrow night AS
the theatre here have heard nothing of any
change, it is to be hoped that both TRACE
dams intend to fill the dates. At the other
house there are IumOrS of johnson &
SlaYin's MINISTRIES and Fanny Davenport,
but nothing definite could be learned last
evening.
Robert Elsmere has been produced on
the stage, and as might be expected, it
proves to be a dramatic curiosity. To quote
from a Bridgeport account, hIr. Gillette has
executed his work very sl1ilfully. To pro
duce an acting play he has changed the
story as told by Mrs. Humphrey Ward in
many of its features. For instance, the
squire, one of the strongest Of Mrs. Ward
creations in the novel, and the profoundly
learned and cynical aristOcr2t who vas
chiefly instrumental in breaking up the
foundations of Robert Elsmera's former
faith, does not appear on the
stage at all. Edward Langhain, the Ok
ford lecturer and brilliant litterateur, is also
depicted in a decidedly changed light. In
the novel he is presented as a man whose
emotions have been thoroughly burned out
by passionate seltishness, who regards
life as hardly worth the living. He does
not try to make converts to his infdel
creed, because the effort involves too much
work The dramatist has so far changed
all this as to leave little of the original
Langham beyond the languid pedant. In
stead of iilting Rose he marries her. In
the book he is greatly averse to discussing
religious matters, but in the play he does
not hesitate to advance some keen argu-
mentS from the agnostic standpoint in a
controversy with clergyman, who in the
book is so filled with piOus zeal as to be al
most a fanatic, but in the play develops
very closely into the character of a villain.
On the stage Robert Elsmere does not die as
in the book. When the curtain falls in the
last act it is upon a scene wherein
he has effected reconciliation with his
wife, who has been virtually estranged
from him on account of the divergence in
their religious views. She sacrifices, or
pretendS to sacrifice, the tenetS of faith
that have been so sacred to her because the
physician has told her that in no other way
can her husbands life be saved Such an
acJ OF whey ueVOtlOn cannot DuJ appeal
strongly to an audience and constitutes a
very effective climax. The book lacks the
comedy element almost wholly, but in the
play an effort has been made to supply it by
changing Hugh FlaXman from a cultured
and nOble-hearted gentleman into dude of
the Dundreary order, and by giving promi- |
hence to Albert Wynnstay as horsey in
dividual who is henpecked by vivaciOus
wife and takes life with vacuous stolidity
and dry philosophy which makes the role
humorous. Interpreted by
company equal to that which appeared here
the piece is sure to prove u success.