The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-10-25
In new YORK THEATERS
ETHEL BARRYMORE IN HER NEW
PLAY WINS PRAISE.
Her Brother Likely to Win Distfnc-
tiOn on the Stage-Francfs Will
son i'm "Erminie" Once More.

Correspondence Of the Indianapolis Journal.
NEW YORK, Oct. 23.-'I am twenty-nine
years old" says Ethel Barrymore once
or twice a day, but il is in a play. and
well she knows that the audience doesn't
believe her. We have so many actresses
trying to look as young as their heroines
that Miss Barrymore's assertion OF five or
six more years than the truth about her
age is one of the piquant things in Cousin
Kate" the new comedy of the week in New
York. Her role is that of not quite old
maid and not nearly a soured maid, but
alive enough one, whose heart is not dead
enough TO break. but alive enough 10 ache,
while she thinks she must give up her lover
for duty,s sake. The character was not
fitted TO Miss Barrymore per order. and she
has, in her short time on the stage, acquired
the skill to fit herself to the character.
Yet there is her personality, individuality,
or whatever we choose to term the elusive
but potent quality which makes one wom-
an in a thousen6 irresistible the stage.
Maude Adams has il wonderfully, and l
name her here as I do Mary Anderson,
to illustrate by contrast what mean Miss
Andersons cold beauty and melifiuously
powerful voice forced admiration, but never
any affection Miss Adams fascinates us,
and makes us admire her affectionately-
but how? We know that she is an ac-
complished artist. if we stop to think of
that. but usually don't. She never seems
to be doing anything by rule or note; her
stage ways and means are all her own,
and Miss Barrymore is another young wom-
an whom we esteem as an artist when
we remind ourselves of the fact. but whom
we enjoy without effort. because she is
what she really is. Creatures lucky as
we'll as lovely are Maude and Ethel.
featherweight among plays in the
fight for New York attention is this
cousin Kate" It's London author, Hubert
Henry Davies, hardly more than boy,
strikes no hard emotional blows, but spars
lightly and deity with sentimental humor.
Kate encounters an audacious but polite
Irishman in an English railway carriage,
gives him impulsively half her luncheon
and all her heart; learns that he is engaged
to marry her young cousin; is wretched
while making up her mind that it is her
duty to give him up. and equally happy
when it turns out that the girl would
rather wed another fellow anyway. That is
all the plot there is to it, but the compo-
sition is comedy so closely to travesty, yet
at all the danger points saved from absurdi-
ty by good writing and good acting, that
il piqued and pleased its first New York
audience. In the middle one of the three
acts Kate and her wooer are by them
selves in an unused house during a rim
storm, and he likens her to Little Silver
Locks i'm the nursery tale of that child's
experience with bear in a lonesome forest
den while he declares his love and is ac-
cepted after only few hours acquaintance.
So expeditions are they in courtship that
they are as good as married and settled
that same evening. 1t has all the speed of
Romeo and Juiet's affair, but doesn't run
beyond the altar TO the tomb. And Ethel
Barrymore, heress through her mother
and grandmother to the Drew genius Of
easy expression, and through her father to
personal beauty, sends this modern romance,
preposterous and even ludicrous as it is,
across the footlights with the convincing
manner of a transcript from ordinary life.
How does she do it? Well, 1 have already
come as near as 1 can to telling you. Yet
it is not wholly explainabe.
Another Barrymore, Lionel, younger than
Ethel, a stalwartly handsome fellow, is
assembling his youth this week in the
guse of an eyed Boer general. 1.-THE Best
of Friends a typical English melodrama
from Dury Lane, is set before us on a stage
spacious enough to hold it's big scenes with
out crowding. A circus parade through
an oxford street with a band chariot, two
menagerie cages and tableaux float, be-
sides many performers on horseback and on
foot while crow6 of spectators look on.
A second remarkable setting is a gorgeous
banquet hall with British militiamen seated
at the three long tables arrow. while a
fourth across & platform accommodates
the presiding officer and his especial guests,
all with realistic imitation of such a func-
ton in reality. Episodes in South African
warfare are illustrated in the same almost
fancy that he may become as favorite an
actor as his father ever was, and the
only doubt about it arises from the fact
that already he is better artist. Maurice
barrymore was ever unchangeably the
same in a rather peculiar. mode of speech.
and it was never thought desirable to hide
els light of beauty under the bushel of a
makeup. Now. Lionel made his first mark
last season, in a comdy with his uncle,
John Drew, as an Italian organ grinder
unable to speak Ineligible English. 1t was
an easy role, what in stage parlance is
called fat, and the vogue of the Drews
and Barrymores helped him to favor In it.;
yet he made exceedingly distinct sketch
of its scant material. In the present melo-
drama he Is a white haired full-bearded
and sonorous-voiced Boer commander. who
fights to the last ditch, and then falls into
il. killed by a broken heart on seeing the
Transvaal flag displaced by the British
colors. He is such a rugged stalwart as a
SAM DEvERE