The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-03-06
D'ORSAY AND THOMAS AGAIN.
4THE EURiSSi BALL" REPEATS
iN IWUSING IHPRE <SION.

FRIGHT Lines ana the D'Orsay silly ASS
Tont n Farce Built on the Most Hack.
move Lines and Almost without
Characters Clarke and Robinson.
IN a Pleasant little curtain speech last
NIGHT at Days Mr.. Lawrance D'Orsay
said that he had entreated Mr.. Augustus
1bora, rot to make him a silly ass again,
and that Mr.. Thomas had answered:
syeyah mind, old chap, III just make you
voprself." Those who understand why the
audience laughed %delightedly at this do
moi need to be told why THE Embassy
Rail" scored a favorable impression in
snte Of the flimsiness INT the long famili-
arity Of the material of which il is made.
whether Mr.. D'Orsay rds himself need
not here lc determined, butIhe was, as he
has always been under Mr.. Thomas's guild
ance the fat hea ded, muddy Drained, sound
hearted descendant of a long line of sta &c
e0ure,. Of which Lord Dundredrv and
cart. Han1roe in Caste are the most
prominent examples.
Far the fact that such characters do
sometimes exist in life we have Mr..
Tbomas's word, and some little antecedent
prohahll,tv beside. But it. was not as hold
ing the mirror up to nature that Mr.. D'Orsay
SCORED. Nature happened to cast him in
a role familiar to the stage n dear to the
popular heart. And whatever nature has
done to disqualify him by giving him brains
he thrifty converts to the task of seeming
not to have any, which he does very skill
fully and amusingly.,
Beside one or two racily sketched char
acters, and his usual abundance OF crisp and
vernacular lines" Mr.. Thomas has not
done much to aid his hero. 1t appears that
in its first incarnation the piece was a fail
ure. Just what corpse reviver he has since
employed, or, to put the matter more agreea-
bly-it is an agreeable evenings entertain
ment. after all-what solution of boracio
acid or formaldehyde, is not apparent.
The plot. so far as there is any such COM
modify, is Of the most familiar and the least
inspiring order. To rescue a young woman
in distress Mr.. D'Orsay has signed a mar
riage license lit happened in Paris), under
the impression that 1t was a bicycle per
NIT, and the Young woman ungratefully
subscribed not her W name but the name
Of the girl he was in love with.
She subsequently complicated matters
by writing a short story about the incident.
There are two or three other Ia dies, in the
cast and out of it, to whom he has become
engaged with similar ~inconsequence, with
the result that complications are woven
about every Tom, Dick and Harry, Mol,
Meg and Miriam.
And then there is the Hear familiar ex-
pedient Of making him miscall the name
of the principals in the cast. Ore WethereH
Is hv turns Wetherbee, WHherspoon and
FeohcraN. His one tru love and her
father, named Bender, are now and again
TriSier, Turner and Bounder. He even
mistakes the State which old Bender repre-
sants in the Senate; Oregon, for a battle
ship and a river-which latter in its turn
becomes Orinoco and Ohio. 1t is not as
nae Aa = -.,,-1 ~
his s!llrs Of the tongue with more than the
usual skill, and Mr., D'Orsay has seconded
him with rare JUNCTION and address.
And lacking az the play is in fresh idea
and character, it is endowed with a liberal
supply of the crisp and wildly human
is first, without a rival. There are many
passages throughout. and particularly at
the beginning Of the first act and at the end
Of the third, where the situations were
diaphanously thin and the narrative ran
dry. But they were literally punctuated
observations upon human nature, which
gratefully palliated them, and in fact
stamped the whole as a success.
For the most part the audience followed
the play with comfortable and heartfelt
enjoyment. There were no bursts OF I'M
controllable laughter, such as made the
great success Of THE Earl Of Pawtucket.'
but the entertainment was on the whole
hearty and continuous. Many a better
play has provided much less fun
George Clarke played Senator Bender
with a theatric emphasis which was not
without skill and which provoked much
merriment, scoring in fact the most prom
inent success of the evening next to Mr.
D'Orsay, but which nevertheless was at
bottom both exaggerated and lacking in
artistic JUNCTION. Mr.. Forrest Robinson
PLAYED a much less promising part with in
fnitely more artistic feeling, and also made
his impression with the audience. The
women characters were virtually non-ex-
lstent, as is generally the case in Mr..
Thomas's plays, and would nave provided
no opportunity for much more gifted
actresses than Miriam Nesbitt, Rose Hub
bard, Marion Barney and Ida Darling.
Walter Hitchcock played an unimportant
part of one of the young lovers with no ugh
ardOr and conviction, and Mr.. Harold
Heaton made what could be made of V e
less promising material. = Two or three
Of the biggest laughs Of the evening were
evoked by William Pickens, a darky bell
bow, played by himself.
The title of the piece is a misnomer, in
that the Embassy Ball" barely figures in
the dialogue and actually takes place after
the fall Of the last curtain; but it is not I'M
descriptive Of a play that is not a play. .
Neither Mr.. Thomas nor Mr.. D'Onsay has
added to his l%aurels; but together they pro-
vide an evening of light and harmless enter
talnment