Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-04-23

base ball players will have no contention
from the theaters With the eXactitude of
a series OF clocks regulated from common
center the play houses of this city will
close their regular seasons on the night of
May q. The Columbia alone will remain
In the field with a stock company. The
Columbia Theater has so often saved the
playgoing public from the utter ennui
which threatens in the spring time that it
is beginning to claim grateful recognition.
1t cannot be said that the season goes out
in blaze Of glory. Indeed there has been
little during the entire winter to invite un-
restrained enthusiasm. When so eminent
star as Miss Maude Adams returns with a
play as nearly threadbare as The Little
Minister" reinforced only by a curtain
raiser there can be little doubt that the
supply Of play material is limited.
X X X X x
This curtain raiser. Top O. Me Thumb"
which Is properly a curtain raiser despite
the fact that It is put last in the bill, is
quantity remarkable study. 1t is as full
of tears as the title is of apostrophes. Miss
Adams disdains the comedy that struggles
for expression all through it. When rip
pie of laughter is aroused it is quickly
stiiied. The pathos of pride IS its keynote
What a jolly little rag-a-muffin Miss Top
O. Me Thumb might be made; quite as ex-
hilarating in her way as Dickens Little
March!oness. But that browning feminine
misfortune. lack of personal charm, puts her
beyond hope. as the playwrights see her
case. and Miss Adams seizes upon the role
as one which may earn the always coveted
tribute of tears. 1t Is q mistake to say
that most of us go to the theater only to
laugh A great many attend for the sake
of a good old-fashoned cry. Wrath and
uncenny. this Amanda Afleck haunts the
memory. Miss Adams has a way of con-
centrati1g. or seeming to concentrate, her
whole emotional nature into a single word.
When Amanda fondles the laundry pack
age which she holds as a souvenir of her
Prince Charming, as when she rhapsodizes
over his gift OF cheap jewelry, the absurd
ity of It is forgotten, and only plying
realization of this waits great heartburn
ger remains. Yet It is not a serious study
of sentiment. Amanda makes no preten-
sions whatever to nobility Of sentiment.
She is inspired only by feminine vanity.
The struggle of this vanity against adverse
conditions Is magnifed until it takes on
almost the proportions Of a tragedy.
The theater is doing few great things now.
But it IS doing some small things exceed
ingly well. and "Op O. Me Thumb" Is one
of them Il is a gem. tiny, but of the first
water.
x X 4 X X
The battle between beauty and traditional
stage entertainment for supremacy still
RACES. Francis Wilson has capitulated as
far as comic opera is concerned, and will
no more meet the chorister on her own
10 mill IN In
which there ara no songs and dances. But
Frank Daniels is fighting 1t out to finish.
His new play, Sergeant Brue, keeps him on
the qui vive and at one juncture 1t looks as
If the chorus has him surrounded and cut
off from supplies. But Mr.. Daniels is
strategist. When the long line of girls has
moved in picturesque diagonals across the
stage and helped to earn enough encores
for Miss Rings Molly song, the come
dian steps in from ambush and finishes the
procession himself just to remind the au-
dieuce that hs is the real star of the show.
MIR. Daniels succeeds i'm UNFOLDING his stel
lar dignity wonderfully well in Sergeant
Brue. The character of a policeman per-
mits him few of the eXtravagances of
makeup which help out so much in anus
ing. But the Daniels eyebrow is makeup
enough. II is an eyebrow which any press
agent might be glad To write sounets to.
81 50 IS y y
The contest between musical comedy and
melOdrama was fierce and relentless in a
concocticu which appeared under the tile
of MY Tom Boy Girl" at the Lafayette
y plot which was almost ferocious in some
Of It's cl.maNes; which had to do with dark
secrets and decp-dyed villainy was inter-
rupted with airy nonchalance every now
and then by the advent of a bevy of lasses
who had apparently reached an arbitrary
conclusion that they had been kept in the
background long enough. They decided
that it was time to sing or perform a
march, and did So regardless of she feel
ings of a fine old southern gentleman in
great distress over a shocking family Sc
cret or Of the villain, who was at his wits
end to keep from being foiIed. Occasion
ally the effect was destructive Of that
realism which IS usually the proudest boast
Of meiodrama. Even the liberties which a
playwright may take should stop some
where. No beyy of neighborhood girls ever
attended a garden party in short skirts and
tights and pirOuetted while the band played
Dixie Even Newport in its most unre-
strained privacy would gasp at such an in
HoYatiOn.
r x * x x
1t Is always sweet and refreshing TO meet
with some one whose illusions are stiu In
tact, in whom the butterfly wing OF i'm
aginatlon has not molted its iridescent
scales beneath the ruthless touch of ma