, 1892-03-25
NYM CRINKLES LETTER.
An English Rose" Which Is
an Irish Chestnut.
ANOTHER SON OF HIS FATHER,

Clever Little Jane Stuart.
NEW York, March 16.-From mere force
of habit the new production at Proctors
theater was called a new play. 80,
When tell you that 1.-THE English Rose"
Is an Irish chestnut you will know how
great a mistake force of habit Is RESPONSE
BILE for.
Did anybody sper see anything new in an
Irish playf Does anybody who wants Irish
plays at all want anything new1 i think
not. You might as well talk about get
ting up a new Ten Commandments.
There is a prevalent tradition that the
succession OF Irish plays ended with the
Colleen Bawn. 1t is a mistake. The
interest of the public at large may nave
ended with that play, but the colleen
Bawn" has been reproduced under a hun
dred and fifty titles since, and nobody ever
had the hardihood to put anything new
into it.
The object of interest in the play at Proc
tors was Aubrey Boucicault, "A son of the
celebrated Dion.
Fancy a black eyed, 1.-the and sinewy
STRIPPING, who looks nineteen and may DO
TWENTY-FIVE, who has something of his ia
theirs impetuousness and quality Of voice,
but who is lank, callow, unfiedged and un-
disciplined-then you have young Bouci-
cault. But you must go farth6s and inn
agine him in a heroic role, with horseman-
ship and lovemaking. galore before You
can understand how he struck the first
nighters there assembled to size him up.
Sons of eminent actors do not, / am sorry
TO say, pan out eminently. We have al
Emmett Fritz, Jr., and a Mayo Crockett,
Jr. Their fathers made two mistakes.
will mention one OF them-they let their
sons GO on the stage. Dramatic genius
,1isHQrdQ harpditV aS n rnlp III Edwin
Booth had had a son he would doubtless
make a most excellent entry clerk. 1 be-
lieve Lester Wallack's sons ore m
accountants and delightfully."- prosaic gen.
tlemen of Observation-Disclosures.
Far be it from me to say that young
B%oucicault will never be as great as his
father. Such an assertion would be wholly
eratuitous, seeing that the world has not
yet made up its mind just how great the
father was. That the young man will
prosper and die rich is manifest If be
sticks to Irish plays and doesn't try to inn
itate his father too closely,
In saying that there is nothing new I'm
the English Rose" l meant that its story
is Of the oppressed Irish tenant and the
brutal English agent, with an Irish mob
of %virtuous peasantry and -~constabulary
and an English girl beloved by an Irish
lad. You can write the play yourself with
this synopsis IL you have time. But in the
middle OF it was a horse. And the horse
won the triumph. What all the papers
called a great scene was a supposed horse
race that takes place off the stage and in
which the Irish hero rides against the Eng
fish agent, What we see is not the race,
but the ~peasantry with sticks, bowling
and gesticulating in a ompact mob and
giving us to understand very plainly hat
II the English agent wins the race he will
be torn to pieces. Noise OF, an unineelli-
gible kind here makes a great scene.
But enough about the Irish play. 1t il
a sensational fad for gallery prejudice,
built upon the thesis that landlords are
enemies of the human race, and English
girls. would be Irish II they could and es-
tablish n ~squatter sovereignty in the Green
Isle.
Manager Pitou has got in here with his
stock at the Union Square and
presented to New York a farce called ''The
Last Straw" II was top heavy with good
players, but the ~underpinning of the play
was defective and light. Miss Seligman, a
fervid, uneven actress of the tumultuous
school, had to do the ~farcical wife. That
in itself is the playing OF a jig on a church
organ. Farce is not her speciality. Her
vibration is too large. 1t was like a heavy
weight in a cake walk.
Seligman properly nurtured in the ~
cretia Borgia school would renew for us
some "reminiscences of Lucille Western.
Asked to gyrate In a door slamming pas
quinade, she suggests a freight train on a
picnic. or course you don't look for touch
and go in Lady Macbeth, do your And a
volatile effervescent Media is like Bob
Ingersoll's attacks on Christianity, and
makes you ask with DR.. johnson why an
elephant should try to walk n tight rope.
NJ D;tn,,to oapnnanv 10 N nno1 xuprltnu
company without a good working piece up
TO date. What he has in his w~astebasket
| cannot tell. All we can do with his ex-
pertinent at present is to count up the ex-
cellent actors misplaced. This is not APP
probation; it is arithmetic.
However, n will not do to overlook one
thing. Manager Pitou sprung a one act
preludium called a curtain raiser" in
which a little actress, Jane Stuart, had all
the cards. This little woman is the daugh-
ter of a New York politician, and when
ever she appears in a new role you will
find the front seats and the boxes filled
with stalwart men, who roll up from the
custom house and the city hall and Tam
many to assist her.
Aside from the gusty whirlwinds of con-
idence she is a most deserving artist, and
she came forward this time in a bit OF
realism from life and broke her heart and
suffered according to the new dictum,
which insists that the stage shall not give
us things as they ought to be, but as they
are.
She did it beautifully. The man she
loved turned out to be a sordid cad, just as
men often do in life. When he found she
had no fortune he Tilted her. Then she
saw him make love to her wealthy cousin
and she collapsed-curtainl
II, while they were being married, he
had swiped the altar cloth, it would still
be life, and If loves young dream had
ended suddenly in the hero being sept up
for ten years, we should nave been follow
ing the police record. s.I
Life doesn't round up anywhere in the
possible. 1t generally wallows in the ac-
tual, and those ~realists who want to keep
the stage along that towpath are always
delighted to ave their story cut off with
a cheese knife, just as their grocer cuts off
bacon. b.
Keep your eye on Jane Stuart. There
isn't much of her, physically, but oh, what
a load Of ambition and determination she
carries. If she doesn't get there it will
be because her career, like her play, fol-
lowed life instead of an ideal.
She interests me-not on account of her
-pecialty, but on account of her thorough