The San Francisco call., 1906-11-08

oNDoN, Oct 2o.-New manager,
I new playwright, new company
( new play at the Criterion, and
- all apparently rather successful.
Jerrard Grant Allen. son Of the famous
novelist, traveller and writer on popu-
lar science, took over the management
of the theater in PIccadilly Circus for a
venture with comedy by w. Kings
lev Tarpey, entitled The Amateur So
eialist." and 1t may be sup
posed that the result would De
a nice amateur performance, TO
be forgotten in a week or two. But
il proved to be a really bright, unpre-
tentious, effective comedy. based on the
foibles of a rich. kindly aristocrat, who
had become infected with all sorts or
radical ideas. and who wore red neck
ties and urrsptitiously addressed mass
meetings of striking costermongers- On
the occasion which. concerns the play
he was carried away by his own elo-
quence and got into trouble with the
police, escaping only with the help of a
nice young man whose name he hadn't
caught
In the second act two police inspect
ors smuggle themselves into the house
Just as the amiable reformer is giving
a fashionable dinner party. Supposing
them to be brother agitators. he asks
them to stay to dinner, and they make
a great hit with their social prowess.
apologetically arresting the host after
ward. In the third act we find him
in police court. indignant because
he has been acquitted, and denouncing
the law for its laxity, and likewise
discovering that the nice young man
who had been arrested with him was
the same young man whom he had for
hidden his ward to marry on the
ground that the youth was heir to an
earldom, and therefore not Mt to as
sociate with true democracy. 1t Is a
one-act play, and happily the actor was
Eric Lewis, whose mellow and urbane
humor never had better chance. The
rest of the cast, which included Lillian
Braithwaite, was good, too
There was American interest in The
Lemonade Boy" the one-act play which
preceded The Amateur Socialist" for
the author is Miss Gladys Unger, an
American girl of whom great things
are predicted in the way of plays Bour-
chier is to bring out drama Of hers
soon, and Frohman is said to have
contracted with her for several plays.
THE Lemonade Boy is only slight
episode, but it shows plainly enough
the real dramatic instinct.
Musical comedy is dead" 1t is like
ly that George Edwardes is sorry now
that he made that historic declaration,
which has proved quite as mistaken as
did an equally fatfooted statement on
the part of a distinguished general
about the finish of the Boer war. Mu-
steal comedy dead Well, judging by
the latest accounts from America, there
has been no interment there. lat all
events, and so far as London is con-
cerned the best answer to the Gaiety
managers gloomy assertion is the fact
that at no less than nine important
West End theaters musical pieces Of
the lightest texture are playing TO big
business. Moreover, by the irony Of
events, two of the playhouses men
toned are Mr.. Edwardes' own, for, al
though both The New Aladdin" at the
Gaiety and "See-SeeS at the Prince OF
Wales were heralded as distinct de-
partures from the doomed" form OF
entertainment, neither piece achieved
any special success until 1t had been so
transmogrified and 'popularized" that