New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-10-08


droop of the Geisha girl. Only long
training and perfect supp1eness of body
could have invested him with this power
at SO advanced an age
Japan is undermining or cosmopoliZing
her theater as she is cosmopolizing all
her other institutions. Toxic actually
has a brick theater made of real bricks,
presenting the Japanese idea of Occi-
dental melodrama. A railway train, real
but small, shoots across at R. U. E., to
the audiences huge delight, and snow
falls upon the slightest provocation and
sometimes without any provocation what
ever. The scenery is partly Occidental
and partly Oriental, and the general
effect is somewhat complicated, like that
of dignifed Japanese gentleman in
kimono, silk hat and top boots.
We saw two of these plays. In the
first the gallant and loving lover had
stolen or purloined or appropriated or
secreted a paper whose disappearance
was vital necessity to the fortunes of
the girl he loved. He was arrested, and
for her sake his lips were sealed. He
suffered in silence as acutely as at the
Third Avenue or the Surrey. Then there
was an admirable court scene in act third
which also revealed the great value of
The Chute" A cocl1y little bai1iff
elected disturber along the whole length
of The Chute, and the audience rose.
The other play was Occidental melo-
drama at the boiling point. In act first
the cool villain-his malignity was far
below zero-proposed to the girl, and
she scorned his advances, whereupon he
popped her into a basket and hired a
rickshaw man to transport her to a
lonely wood scene far from the haunts of
men and policemen. Act second was
the lonely wood scene, and the rickshaw
man said: "This looks to me like crime.
A hundred ven is the price of my silence"
The villain, kissing with rage, checked
his angry passion and dallied with the
rickshaw man, telling him to call around
on the first of the month, and mean
while unwound his deadly obi. His
deadly obi was the silken sash around
his waist. With this he cleverly roped
the unsuspecting rickshaw man about
the throat and began to twist it. 1t was
awful. 1t took five minutes for the
rickshaw man to die, the most realistic
gurgling, sufocating, paling death-scene
| ever saw. The audience did not appear
to be at all carried away by horror. but
rather viewed the scene from a critical
standpoint, closely watching the quality
of the acting The struggle is the backbone
of Japanese melodrama. Into it the ma
tional training as wrestlers enters largely.
The rickshaw man being finally dead,
the villain released the heroine from the
basket She stormed, upbraided. pleaded
in the conventional way. Elementary
dramatic ideas are the same in all coun-
tries Finally, "Ha, hal" her eyes fell
upon the dagger in his girdle. You did
not hear her eyes fall and she did not
say HAL hal" but you caught the point
perfectly. She then changed her tactics
and became soft and winning, for a pur-
pose. The villain, deceived and delight
ed threw away his trusty cigarette and
proceeded to embrace her. She snatched
the dagger, and the struggle began. 1t
was two up and two down, right hand
across, balance to partners, as conven-
+iona1 as the combat of the CrummleS