The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-04-16
THE THEATRES THIS WEEK.
OLDEST or FIRST NIGHTS "THE
STARBUCKS' HAD At DALP'S.

! His Piay-"A vines Peril" heNVeu
-Chewing Gum ~ an Antidote 70 Stage
HEROES at tho Murray HIN Playhouse
1t is not often that play In New York
on it's opening night has such royal root
ing as Opie Reads THE Starbucks, at
Days Theatre. No press agent, purely
passionate or merely calculating. could
have devised the story Of that box party
consisting, az II did, OF politics, poesy. hair
enthusiasm and q bald head. The owner
! of the latter decoration set the ball-altitude
not given--rolling early In the evening
A character in the play stammers' and
possibly because OF reflex imitation-psy.
biologists call IL mirpdchit-the delighted
old person gave vent 70 no stTsns ha
sneeze and disappointed. chuckle. That
| started the audience, and until the hnal
| curtain old theatregoers were amazed
! by the persistency Of the noise, the ill.timed
applause. laughter and general j1iitS
vastly entertaining, far more entertaining
than the bucolic magic-lantern slides on
| the stage. Such an extemporaneouh
| boom Is hardly fair to other BROADWAY
houses. And It can never be duplicated
at the same show.
Director Alexander Lambert, some times
| known as the Hobson OF Lake Hopatcong,
where during the summer he commands a
| fierce little petroleum hotills. made q very
subtle criticism of THE Starbucks.'
IF the people Of Tennessee talk In that
rirtuosi. why doesn't Opie Read make
them really talk in that dialectl' Do you
| see IL?
There are many footlight conventions.
but none is so comically artificial as the
| barnyard and sunbonnet play. Because
dwellers of the soil are poor they are dra-
matically honest and interesting. Nothing
| is further from the truth, a. social scien-
fists are demonstrating every month in the
year Gone forever is the hoary sentiment
Of the horny;handed mountaineer. van
beautiful, interesting and monsters OF
virtue. Life without city limits is not so
idyllic as sloppy novels and sull sloppier
plays would have US imagine.
There are az much meanness, vulgarity,
dishonesty lust and other pet sins OF the
theologians nesting within any New Eng
land village or Southern mountain settle
ment as may be found In the kidney part
of New York's Tenderloin. And yet what
heroic sawdust and sentimental bran these
tiresome men and women Of dialect drama
are made to sputter! Shore Acres "
the best Of its sort, and it's virtues were we'll
MANFRED by melodrama.
1t is always curious 10 witness a play
that once had q vogue, for nothing stales
and ages like the theatre. Few books
possess the antiseptic OF style to defy time:
fewer plays. We can recall the days when
"A Wife's Peril'-once upon time called
Bosom Fnends'-wss considered thrill
ing. IL was made over from Sardou's
Nos Intimcs" and bears the familiar
technical hallmarks Of this mastery tech
nician. 1t also smells Of Scribe and his
well made mechanism.
The balance of character suggests arti-
fciality. and the Rdisonneur. that bore OF
a preacher who always sets things right
In the DumasfGai drama, holds the centre
of the stage throughout. Written in 1851.
to note she fact that its fourth act re-
sembles sing,ilarly q vaudeville entitled
.Discours dc Bentrfe.' And this In by far
the beat act In Nos lntimes.'
Mrs. IAngtry played Lady Ormord here
in the Anglicized version a dozen years
ago. It cannot be said that the adapter
has made much Of his material. In the
original the visitors at Ormond Court are
doubtless selfish people. but they are not
so stupid as we see them in A Wife's
Peril Anybody but an idiot would have
bundled them out Of doors for their rude
behavior. And Sir George Ormond Ia not
altogether q fool. He trusts his wife
always a joke in a Gallo play-and he is
not sluggish when the time arrives for
action.
The piece is revived at the Murray Hill
this week. Its Interpretation il on an
uncommonly high plane; IL is almost too
good for Broadway. There, where the
ROSTERS shrill from hayseed dunghills and
comic opera sans music Is heard the act
ing of the Donnelly stock company would
not be appreciated.
For one thing we have Flita Proctor Otis
as Lady Ormond part which she plays
with her accustomed finish and freedom from
rant and exaggeration. Her tact of omis-
sion il praiseworthy. She seldom under
lines a speech. and in the scene fdire, a
most unpleasant episode by the way. she
BY being THEORETICALLY heroic. It is all the
more real and all the more terrible. or
course you recall the small drawing room
at Ormond Court Sir 0eoro< has gone
away on a pretended London visit. So
clumsily does Sardou handle this that If
the wife had been deaf dumb and blind she
would have suspected the ruse. Alone
she is approached by Capt Pvod'orG,
her husbands friend. From a suppliant
lover he soon becomes mixture OF ape
will not be comforted except by the sub
mission Of his friends wife. She, her eyes
opened-ah' what an excellent make Of
blue glasses stage wives sport resists the
false fellow. Then violence supplants the
cooling accents Of duplication and the
audience is Mortified by a wrestling match
in semi obscuity, with an o'iisoto OF gasrs
and groans.
In the present revival Miss Otis Is at
tackled by Mr. Sheldon Lewis. He In more
slender than Miss Otis, but he makes up
In atrabilious intensity what he lacks in
weight. The scene is not edifying.
Luckily, Murray Hill audiences MUNICH gum
when erotics begin to mount the thermome-
ter, and thus the general pulse is not serious
~ disturbed. But the imaginative young
man What does he think "a he nervously
moistens his underlipf Miss Otis Is fine
artist, but no sylph. She u decoiiett-a
mild euphemism. The fight ie brief. wicked.
breathlcss, exoiting-one Of George Broad
hurst's root words. packed like a port
mantsau with many meanings. might serve
here as q descriptive epithet. In short. to
use an expressive evangelical phrase, Miss
Otia swrestles with the devil and u nearly
overcome So near that II she had not re-
membered NJ Sardou's text the curtain
would be the only solution for tight place
In dramatic literature