The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1904-03-27
The Theaters of New York
CONCLUDED FROM PAGE A, PART 81


lished pictures bore the title of 1.-THE Edu-
| cation of Mr.. Pipp" and contained a newly
| rich man under the polishing treatment OF
his daughters, who were typical Gibson
| girls rhe artist made an agreement un-
| der which Augustus Thomas wrote play
| on the basis of those drawings and Stuart
| Robson would have impersonated the ia
Their ii he had not died suddenly after all
| was ready. Before desirable substitute
/ for Robson could be obtained sketch with
| the same name, except that the one word
education" was changed to awakening
was brought out by Grapewin in vaudeville.
Gibson believed that the copyright law
| would protect his Pipp, but IL did not be-
cause the title had been varied and none
of the things shown in the pictures in
the sketch. So the Thomas Robson
| play is killed and the Grapewin play lives
| to grow into full evening length.
This Mr.. Pipp has no daughters nor does
he need any education" in the ways of
Gotham smartness. Fifteen young women
are in the play. and eight of them dis
| played in the manner of show girls in
| extravaganzas, but the only member of the
! company who looks anything like a Glib
soma girl is a long-limbed. rangy Anna
Chance, but she appears as Pipp's wife.
| Their behavior. too. Is away off from the
| in public resort at midnight, for there
! are Vanastorbiltians who would do that
| if they happened to feel like it, but in their
| Bowery department at Fffth-avenue re-
| ception. The awakening" of Mr. Ppp by
his wife, in the cold, gray dawn of the
morning. after his hot-red night, strikes me
| as an artistic study by Grapewin in the
| phenomena OF pOst-inebriety. His getting
| drunk didn't make me smile, but L couldn't
help laughing at him when he was getting
| over it.
The tragedy of THE Good Hope" is the
weeks only sedate new play worth telling
you Of Its value is so literary and uncom-
mercial, however, that single afternoon
performance of faithful translation from
| Hermann Heijerman's Dutch writing is
| all we are likely ever to get II sets forth
| condition rather than a story and there
| fore is deficient in two essentials of the
acted drama-concentration and develop
| ment. Picturesque ii is to a degree l have
| rarely seen on the stage. Haunting ii is TO
the point of living horror. The deadliness
| of the sea hangs over ii like a dark and
| ghOstly cloud. Yet the theme is rather the
| helplessness of life among the Dutch poor
| peasantry. Artfully created is the atmos-
| phere of Holland embodied in the native
| guises of Dutch fishermen. wives and maid
| ems, standing against yellow skies, relieved
| only by black gulls, far out al sea. A deaf
| spectator might get satisfaction by merely
| looking at this staging of Dutch art. Old
| fishermen, now inmates of an almShouse
talk sadly of the sea perils which few have
outlived. A woman widowed by the waves
is forced to send her sons away sailors
though two of their brothers have been lost
One of the surviving boys has served six
months in a naval prison for striking the
officer who slandered his cousin. the girl he
is to marry. The family's poverty necessi-
tates his joining fishing crew, although
il delays his wedlock.
But to describe the best in Heijerman's
play is as unsatisfactory as to write an ac-
count of a master painting. / would like
though, to make you see some of the scenes
in this spasmodic masterpiece, The most
awful one is when the young fishermen en-
bark in the ship Good Hope, unwilling that
| wealthy
founder. The sailors go resignedly if not
quite gladly-all but the fishwife's youngest
son, who is brave in other ways, but has
an Unborn dread of the ocean. Tainted by
his neighbors and driven by his poverty,
he has enlisted; but when the time comes to
sail he hides in abject fear His mother
soothes his means and cries to silence, as
she would a child's and puts his dead
fathers earrings in his fop tokens of
TO the ship, but they can't loosen him from
the doorpost to which he clings. The
owner of the ship. lovingly helps the men
and as they force him towards the float
ing coffin, struggling and screeching, the
woman falls PROSTATE on the ground.
We have a Newfoundland with fewer
graves than dead men, because so many of
its fishers do not come home to die. Might
not one of our dramatists buy this Dutch
play with the rights to use passages in a
| story piece which should. nevertheless, not
| lessen the art or literature Of the material
while conveying Ii TO the general public
Here is a second s. ne which could be
thus used intact. II is two months later
in the same cottage. storm RACES out
side. Around Pickering lamp gath
! cred the wives of sailors who are out on the
waters in the tempest. They talk of sharks
that pursue a ship with corpse aboard;
| of those monsters seizure of wrecked
crews, and while the women tell those
things the is heard TO dash against the
rocks, while in a corner by the fire sits
| he sill oil RI VIII haH to
ere he could marry her. At length her
voice joins the others tremblingly. She tells
OF a dream OF the night before in which
she heard the three taps which. by super
stitious belief, announce the approach of
death to a house. In the awed stiffness
after her recital three slow strokes on the
door make the group shudder-yes and the
audience, too. 1t is indeed omen OF
death, though not supernatural-only an old
man from the almshouse on his way 10
summon doctor 10 his dying mate. Even
as acted by dramatic pupils this was very
deeply impressive And there is no noise
strain or exaggeration to get the effect
When woman says. 1--WE pay dear for the
fish,, II sends such a shiver from parquet
to gallery as even the leap-the-gap cpl
sode. of which 1 wrote a good thing for
melodrama, might not exceed.
Melodramas new at two of the cut-price
theaters are Born in the Bone" and "Out
, of the Fold" Each has a mistreated Cir
! for its heroine, and the author has his ras-
calls fling her with crude violence and nc
, originality of situation into depths of suf-
fering and disgrace. How differently and
more pitifully is the poor creature exposed
in The Good Hope The mother and the
sweetheart of the unwilling and doomed
sailor are left by themselves in the cabin
The roar OF the murderous is in THEN
ears. The girl crouches in the dark and
confesses 10 the woman that more 10 heI
than the loss of the loved one would be the
wreck of the ship. 1t would mean. she
whispers. a fatherless babe who would also
be nameless. The despairing creature opens
the window and looks out the merciless
! waters. The wind blows out the lamp anC
: the room is in utter darkness. We hear hei
fall in moaning terror To the floor and theT
her mad cutlery OF a curse against a Goo
| who has created a sea To der ROY the souls