The Columbus commercial. (Columbus, Miss.) 1893-1922, 1904-11-15
BABES IN
TOyLAND.
The Great New York Success s
Will Exhibit at Coium-
bus, Saturday,
Nov. i9.

November, with an all star cast
is receiving "a most brilliant re-
ception from the public in every
city of the North, and of the
South 50 far as the show has
penetrated into Dixie-land.
''Babes in Toyland," as deli
cate in sentiment as an orchid
appeals TO the ultra critical, TO
the blase, indeed to every zone
who has any perception of scin-
tillating humor and music which
is so fascinating it fingers in
ones mind days after being
heard.
Glen McDonough's genius en-
abled him to take the delightful
nursery stories Babes in the
Woods" and treat them in that
manner peculiarly his own, which
adds interest to those fairy stories
go dear to the heart of every
child.
The opening act shows a party
being given on the lawn of Con-
trafy Mary Piper, Boy Blue,
Jack and Jill, Simple Simon,
Little Red Riding Hood, POO
Peep who lost her sheep, and all
the other fairy-story people are
there. In the midst of this gala
affair Old Barnaby, uncle of
Alan and Jane, appears on the
scene and informs the children
that Alan and Jane have been
lost at sea, The scene of festivity
is ruthlessly destroyed. Contrary
Mary Piper (Alan's sweetheart)
tells Barnaby she does not be-
lieve that her diminutive lover
Alan and Jane are dead, and she
and her brother Tom Tom the
Piper's Son steal away to
look for them.
As the play developes Alan and
Jane appear on the scene dis
guised as Gypsie children. The
audience is let into the secret that
they have been saved, but the
Widow Piper and the two sailors
who abducted them do not know
this; and right here occurs some
situations which are excruciat-
ingly funny. Alan unveils Ro-
dedrigo, the sentimental ruffian
who abducted him, by pretend
ing to read his hand. He tells the
Widow, whom the adventurer is
trying TO marry, that the fellow
has a wife and good many
children, and in wholly horror
this dame, the mother of thirteen
children, abandons her suitor.
In the succeeding acts Alan
and Jane are againin trouble,
for Old Barnaby, pretending TO
be delighted at their rescue,
sends them ostensibly TO his new
home. To get to this home the
children have 10 pass through a
deep wood, in which is located
the deadly Wales of Spiders. In
this wood they are again aban-
doned by Barnaby, he believing
they will surely be destroyed
this time and he will be able to
marry Contrary Mary Piper, as
we'll as get Alan and James
wealth, of which he is custodian.
1t is over this scene where Alan
and Jane, wandering hand in
hand, are sean lost in the woods,
that New York audiences raved.
The foot sore and weary little
travellers seek shelters in the
mouth of a giant cave. They
would have been destroyed by
the bears which tracked them,
had it not been for the Fairy
Moth Queen, who sends a giant
spider TO weave a web over the
mouth of the cave, through which
the bears dare not pass.
In the closing acts, the brilliant
imaginative genius of Glen
McDouough, said 10 be the great
eat exemplifIer of American hu-
NOR, is fully demonstrated for a
complete scenic metamorphosis
is wrought.
When Contrary Mary Piper