The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-11-01
in new YORK THEATERS
HADEs FIGURES PROMINENTLY ON
THE STAGE THERE JUST VOW.
Henry Irving, kyrle Bellew, Nat Good
win and Charlotte Wiehe the
Bright Stars OF h Week.

Correspondence OF the indianapolis Journal.
NEW YORK, Oct. 29.-Henry Irving,
Kyrle Bellew and Nathaniel C. Goodwin
are the dramatic men of the week here, the
Englishmen with Dante" and "Raffies''
and the American with "a Midsummer
Nights Dream" But there is a woman,
new and strange, and politely we will pay
attention TO her first. Charlotte Wiehe is
very pretty. probably forty years old. yet
indicating no more than twenty in her plant
grace and delicate vivacity. She speaks
French with a native Danish accent in a
comedietta, but in the two pantomimes,
which are the better portion Of her enter
tainment, her silent expressions are Partisan
to the smallest pout of a lip and the faint
est droop Of an eyelid. She has been i'm
ported to help establish a French theater
In the place, around a corner from Fifth
avenue, that was known for awhile as Mrs.
Osborne's playhouse.
"I hope you will make as much money
in French" Mrs. Osborne telegraphed to
Charles Frohman on the opening night, "as
I lost in English"
However, the money she lost was not her
own. 1t had been provided by John Jacob
Astor, heir to Astor millions, Frederick Geb-
aAds "uo ttluS always dDlc u llUdllCc lllo
costly exploits. and Norma Munro, daugh-
ter of the Norman Munro who made a big
fortune in the publication of story papers
with borders on them and mawkish senti-
ment in them. Presumably those. three cap
italists got the worth OF their money in sat
isfaction behind the scenes, but the public
shows of pretty girls.
.- x
borne's girls tried to be. In the spoken play
she is a dancer taking supper with her
lover. He has brought her to his rooms to
bid her farewell. as he has picked up a new
mistress. and she has come to break the
news to him that she has caught a richer
admirer. Each learns the fact about the
other at table. She keeps busy with her
mouth both ways. in and out-food and
drink going in and words coming out-dur-
ing all of the half hour that the meal lasts.
Her v~oracity would be repellant and her
slow but sure in~toxication would be disgust
ing If she were not neatly. nicely, delicious
ly funny. But she is wicked and must be
condemned. So let us agree that in he ex-
quisite art she is a deplorable example of
feminine degradation. That eases the con-
science.
x x
French players are taught pantomime as
ours and the English are not. Besides that,
the French people are born to grimace
and gesticulate. Miss Weihe's face and
form are Danish i'm their cool d~elicacy, and
so she looks g~uileless while doing things
wherein a French woman would show the
guilty purpose. In one of the silent short
plays she figures as a doll hypnotized TO
animation by it's maker, and her mechan-
ical motions are drOll without improperly.
But in what the bill terms a mimodrama
she is again a public dancer with a special
private admirer. After she has sent him
away from her room she discovers a burg
lar hidden behind a p~ortiere, dissembles her
fright by rehearsing a dance and contrives
to call her lover back to rescue her. Miss
Weihe tells this story, with small assist
ance from two men, in action that speaks
as plainly as any possible words. She en-
ploys hardly any of the arbitrary symbols
common TO pantomimists, but conducts her
self almost exactly as she might If she were
speaking the role. l had not known, or
imagined, that pantomimic art could be
made to serve so eloquently in lieu Of
speech.
But this Danish siren from Paris applies
her natural gifts and acquired facilities to
what in our stage terms is called an un-
dressing act. OF course, she doesn't sit
on a trapeze and toss her stockings across
the footlights, nor make a .travesty of bed
room bashfulness, but is as unconsciously
innocent OF mien as any prima donna ever
was in the disrobing scene of Fra Diav-
olo." She takes off her waist and outer
skirt, stands forth in corset and petticoat,
both short, and dances very sinuously be-
fore a mirror. with her thoughts seemingly
all intent on the hidden burglar, and with
put so much as a furtive CLEAN of con-
seriousness that a hundred spy glasses are
focused on her from the auditorium. The
rascal affects so much purity of design.
and looks 1t so perfectly, that we are apt
to forget she is bedeviling us. So we will
say resolutely once more that she is a de-
graded artist. and pass on to a subject of
contrasting dramatic dignity.
x
Henry Irving in Dante goes TO Hades
every evening, with Sunday off, but an
extra trip on Saturday afternoon. So does
Tyrone Power In the current Ulysses"
So does Blanche Bates in '"Th Darling of
the Gods 1t is as though the Internal.
internal, eternal fires had broken out at
three spots in this city. All this is reverently
done, and so is the illustration at a fourth
theater in "Ben-Hur," of the Christian
way to earn entrance to heaven. Obser-
walton of the audiences shows that pious
people go 10 see these three plays based
on religion. Grave men in the garb of
clergymen are always present in each as
semblage. The gods whose darling Miss
Bates impersonates, however, are heather
Japanese and. because their darling shows
disrespect for her ancestors, then sentence
her TO a thousand years OF misery in a
japanese purgatory on her way from earth
10 heaven. But Dante and Ulysses arc
personally and quickly conducted by cooked
guides through the fiery caverns of a Cal.
whistle hell as Mortified but unscorched
tourists. Whatever may be the religious
effect OF Dante's visions of Satan's realm
here given with awful realism, there car
be no doubt of their theatrical impressive
ness. Although the Sardou play is not a
clear blend of Dante biography with his
fiction and the traditions concerning him
but an incoherent tumble of them with