The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-12-07
ADJUSTMENTS.


Marie Dressler is to farce-comedy what
Ada Rehan is to the legitimate and Maggie
Kline to vaudeville The only trouble with
Miss Dressler is that she is so versatile she
may be lifted any day to comic opera, from
where she came originally Her star is
right now of the first magnitude and shin
ing directly in the zenith The death rate
in her path falls to zero, excluding the vic
Tins who die of laughter, and hence In
dianapolis may expect a season of good
health following her engagement at Eng
lishs where she opened last night with
"Courted Into Court" This city has never
seen anything like Dressler since May IT.
wins last visit, about the time of the dis
covery of Natural Gas" There is abso-
lutely nothing with which to compare her.
Beside her the fin-de-siecle soubrette glim-
mers weakly, like a tallow dip in electric
light works. When she sings her voice
crowds the paper on the wall, and when she
opens her arms in one of her forte gestures
old men and young involuntarily lean for
ward. Women who lace tightly should not
go to see her. Her good natured
laugh would set the cups rafting
in the pantry, and the humorous faces with
which she illustrates her witty lines
would turn a formal society function into
leave the opera house and forget the name
of McNally's farce, they may retain only
an indistinct recollection of John c. Rice
shooting up in the air and cracking his
heels three times, but they cannot efface
from memory the luxurious DressIer, nor
her songs. Recently members of "our set
and the uncomfortable "alSo rams have
been greatly taken with coon songs" un-
til every parlor maiden has one or two in
her repertory, but the "coon song was
never sung in Indianapolis until last night
when Dressler gave "Ram-a-Jam, 1 Want
that Man." AS g. reciter Dressler rivals De-
Wolf Hopper. As an encore last night she
gave that charIningsy fresh Bowery selec-
ton, Bully Bess,' and it caught the house
as hard Casey at the Bat" ever did,
But Dressler is not all of the company
which Rich & Harris has sent here. John
C. Rice, who is Jointly starred with Miss
DRESSER, is another one of those unique
metropolitan products that drop in on little
towns once in a decade He looks for the
world like his picture. with which every
one is familiar since the cinematograph
showed the famous May Irwin kiss. The
other end of that kiss, the man with
9 mustache that was continually tickling
the Irwin nose was John c. Rice. Rice is
g singer, dancer and all-round funmaker.
His business is to gather up an arInioad of
comic material and turn ii over in the rough
70 Dressler, who proceeds to mold it into
the brightest comedy before the eyes of
the delighted people. They work together
as beautifully as a familiar household pow
der, one part in blue paper and the other in
white. which, when dissolved and poured
into one tumbler, takes up all the available
SPACE and boils over with joy. Dressler and
Rice. II taken together, will cause the sour
est old citizen TO boil over with joy and
send him home feeling less like beating his
wife than he has since her mother came to
live with him. Then there is jacques IIru-
ger. In burlesque character part and
Sally Cohen IN more songs and dances,
and John q. Sparks the only John G.
Sparks on the stage, in Irish burlesque and
Clare Palma, and James r Callahan. and
May Duryea. and Oscar Figman, and too
many others to mention Figmans one song.
The SWEETEST Thing in Town. is one Of
the best things since Henry nixies En-
glish, You Know but Joseph Coyne who
sang IL here in the unjustly abused Good
Mr. Best" can give Figman pointers Coyne
could work 1t for three or four encores
while Figman, barely secured one. AS a
farce "Courted Into Court" has no license
10 live, but with such entertainers in the
cast II will be always welcome. The en-
gagement is for two more days only, with a
Wednesday matinee.