The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-03-04

New York, March 2.-AS a mathe-
NAUTICAL problem, if one matinee idol
will carry a play a hundred nights,
will twenty Apollos carry a play two
thousand nights? Just as the Rices
and Lederers Of extravaganza have
for many years supplied female beauty
shows, so nov at length Harry Wood
ruff and Henry Miller make an exhibit
ton OF handsome young men in a
drama. Miller rests his record as a
matinee favorite on his achievements
OF long ago at the Empire, and does
not put himself into Brown of Har-
ward, which he produces, but brings
forward the blonde and persistently
young Woodruff as q combination of
the real and the fanciful collegian. He
advertised an entire male cast of col
lege men, and has kept his word; yet at
least two of the actors, William Rus
sell and Howard Estabrook, who sus-
tanned the spirit Of student gayety re-
narkably well have had time enough
to learn the art of acting with Ada
Rehan and Richard Mansfield since
they were graduated from Yale and
Harvard. Directly from a university,
however, is brought the man who hits
hardest in the way of novelty-a very
old man and not an actor at all-in
ward. He walks into a scene in his
own character. jay with whiskers of
the sort that stage winds like to blow
through exactly as he has for many
terms of peddling oranges to success
siVe classes of boys who have plagued
and petted him. There must have
been a Harvard alumni representation
iE the opening audience, for he was
received with yells of welcome, where
!.
tOothless grin; ard he made some of
us feel that we were back at Harvard
and would tip over ash barrels on our
way home.
If Rida Johnson Young had left the
dramatic plot out of Brown of Har-
ward" and made it a comedy of life at
an American university, she would
have given to New York an altogether
delightful entertainment. Rarely are
such gay and ingenuOusly cheerful
pictures of college pranl<s have been
put into books and hardly ever into
plays. The freshness is infectious, and
it is seldom, too, that Broadway is
bored with a stage story of such hack
heyed devices and sluShy sentimental
ity as the one which binders the flow
of frolic. And If the layers of buoyant
Iigktness and -staEnant weight
were distinct. so was the display of
two different schools of acting; that
Of the spontaneous realists and the
studied poseuTs-
It would be hard to say just what
the collegians would do in this play to
make blase men giggle in boyish glee,
and feel like cutting up half-fOrgotten
caperS. The students give tea for
two girls and a chaperon, fiiTt with
their. transient Sweethearts on the
campus, interfere with one anOthers
cCUrtshiDs and indulge in a new song
with such a swinging refrain that it
inCites them to an.dmusingly awkward
CakeWalk. 1t isn't so much what they
do, though. as the bully way they do
it: and they have the elastic viTility
of youth beyond anything that is usual
on the stage Forced in with the fresh
spirit of these youths is the stale mat
ter of a ruined girl in a shabby gown,
q seni-repentant fellow who protests
that he is a rOtter, an angelic hero
with a desire to own up to the sins of
others. and a villain who snarls and
Ieers because he believes that villains
always do. No one doubts, from the
first mention of a boat race to its
hCwling finish that the villain will do
some dirty work, or that the hero will
clean 1t up. The bad 'un disables the
crews strongest oaTsman by telling
him Of his sisters shame, and then the
e cd 'un throws off all restraint, ex-
cept running drawers and shirt, and
saves the day amidst the cheers of
characters who try to make US believe
a race is going on by yelling about it.
If ever Rice and Ledered exposed
women to view. so do Woodruff and
Miller uncover their real collegians, for
their arms and bodies are as bare,
and. besides that, the nudity Of their
leo &c 10 hoIf 1f zLr
tights. It is a handsome display of
young muscularity. When Woodruff
who is star now-yielded to the first
night clamor for q speech, he held a
white bathrobe before him, and looked
like March Antony ready for the ora
ton over Caesars body. And when
he drew Miller to the footlights, that
actor in a dress suit appeared to be
choking from clothes. Then there was
a scramble in a side aisle, and a large
lady in white made her way back of
the boxes to the stage, signs of COM
motion marking every step of her
progress, and she didn't cry, wait for
me-" but she looked it. Why shouldn't
she feel elated? 1t isn't often that a
woman writes so good a play.
We are having in New York a spell
of dramatic studies in red and black.
The red is Indian and the black is
African. First as to the red. Away
back at the start Of the season, when
the LiebleTS were preparing THE
SquaW Man." with an Indian chief and
his daughter in il, and David Belasco
was getting ready to introduce chief
and his squaw in 1.-THE Girl of the
Golden West the immediate and
commercial question seemed to be:
Which play shall get to running in
Broadway first?" Really it did not
matter, for both turned out so well
that their opposition helped their pros
perity, and the end of winter finds
them with remunerative audiences;
which shows that there cannot be to
many good things on the stage, even
if they are similar. Lately, when Will
liam A Brady learned that Charles
Frohman, like himself. had in hand
a drama with none but Indian char |
acters. he hustled THE Redskin' along |
and viii bring it into town at the end |
Of this week Meanwhile, burlesques |
of Belasco's and Royle's Indians were
prepared for Coming Thro' the Rye
and 'HTwiddIe Twaddle." The former /