The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-11-18

then, 1 have no ear for great music
and 1 wasn't warranted in refusing to
enjoy myself on the opening right, for
the theatre was crowded by as fash
ionable an audience as ever hailed a
new opera with enthusiasm.
Now for the drop of drama into pop-
ularization by Theodore Kremer, whose
forty-fourth play puts him again in the
lead of competitors, some of whom have
worked up lately into rivalry. The
fiery woman who gives the title to "a
Woman of Fire has a habit of pouring
Kerosene over those she dislikes. touch
ing a match to them, and watching
their discomfort glaefully as human
oonnres. AT the start of the evening,
she undertakes to oil and ignite fluffy
bride, who would blaze beautifully: but
that would end the play in fifteen min
utes; SO her hand is stayed until II
O'CLOCK, when the brides baby has
grown to girlhoood. Then the Woman
OF Fire has another incendiary impulse.
and would haste the youngster with
kerosene, preparatory to cooking her
into funeral baked meat to furnish forth
her wedding breakfast with the father.
whom she loves with confiagratory ar
dor.
But let me not skip over the inter-
which kremer obliterates his imitators'
meiod 1, King of the Opium Ring"
and Queen of Chinatown" The inev-
itaole pair of hellions harass the mar
rled twain, first by abducting the hus-
band and tempting him to smoke
opium, but he dreams only of his wife,
and not at all of the passionate Wo-
man OF Fire. Her next amorous device
Is 10 immune him in a dungeon deep
beneath Chinatown, where he has a
choice of starvation, eating food that
is deadly with opium and taking her to
his arms.
Next, Kremer bethinks him of THE
Clansman' drawing mobs 20 the the
aires by exploiting the black and white
racial question. SO he has the Woman
OF Fire Introduce a lusty, lustful negro
into the dungeon adjoining the hus-
Dands, where the wife IS now iInpris-
oned. The husband has almost CHOSEN
opium rather than starvation or his ny
rotechnic admirer and been dissuadnd
by his wife in dialogue through the
wall which separates them. when he
hears her scream i'm terror of the as
sailing negro. Up to this time the ex-
elements have been taken jocularly,
but now the sight of the frau white
wife in the grasp Of the burly black
rufiian, with the distracted husband
unable to save her, silences and awes
the people But they resume their
laughter when the negrO's mulatto mis-
tress fools him by substituting herself
for the wife in the dark
Two of the seasons rousing plays.
Cape Cod Folks" and "Brewsters MIL
lions" contain each an adventure in a
storm at sea. What does Kremer 90
to scuttle and sink them? The hus-
band and the wife are now likely to he
rescued; so the author puts Ii into the
head of the Woman of Fire to have her
pals pack the prisoners I'm trunks, car
ry them aboard a submarine yacht
which she chances to own. and sneak
away with them under water Put the
husband breaks out on the way to the
wharf, charters a submarine torpedo
boat, and gives chase to the bottom of
the ocean. There the kaleidoscope man.
the fashiight man and all the noise
makers, from the trap drummer in the
orchestra to the operator of TIE thun-
der machine behind the scene, annoy
the fish and an1use the audience with
such a deeD-sea battle as would set
Dewey away back to the simplicity OF
Nelson in the art of nautical warfare
And the husband rises to tia surface
with his rescued wife in his arms.
Now you are thinking that the play
IS over, all but the applause Nay, no.
1t Is not yet 10 o'clock and such new
religious dramas as John the Baptist"
and 1.-THE Prince of India are yet 10
be destroyed by "A Woman of Fire"
So Kremer takes a long breath (while
the husband is spending ten years in
prison on a false conviction of murder
and suffers more at Sing Sing than any
hero in the Siberian plays of snowy
fortunes and desperate escapes) and
then sweils his chest for ar all-Surpass-
ing achievement in Christian piety. II
is here that the Woman of Fire soaks
the child in kerosene, and is ready to
do her worst in human .nciheration
when the wife and mother implores her
to relent and repent. The idea of re-
lenting doesn't appeal to her i. bit, but
the suggestion of repentance strikes her
as a good joke.
"Repentp' she cries. with some ha-
has of fiendish laughter; why, heaven
never would hear me-"
The wife rises from her knees to her
full height, and chantingIy recites:
There is more Joy in heaven over one
sinner that repenteth than ninety and
nine which need no repentance"
who says that"
1.-The holy scripture"
Thereupon. a spotlight suddenly IL
lumines a big Bible. and it automat-
ically-or NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. itself
turns page after page. and finally lies
widespread for the woman to read the
verse. Then she repents so effectually
that, after her angered pal has shot her
to death, troop of angels slide down
the back drop to take her UP to glory
when the kaleidoscope man reverses the
crank. This climax affects the people
seriously? 1t does not. They smoker
when the Bible begins to turn it's own
leaves, and laugh when the curtain
closes in on the spectacle of the bad-to-
good woman's fight TO heaven. New
ertheless, "A Woman of Fire. is a
bowling success.
A stage woman from abroad is Es-
telle de Brogiie. princess and pauper
There is no doubt of the genuineness of
the title which her husband, Prince
Robert de Broglie, was born to: 1t is a
sure thing in the annals of French aris-
tocracy; and he and some other de
Broglies were stampeds sterling by the
Astors, our best connoisseurs in foreign
blue blood. when they were guests here
several wears AGO Rut RO1prt'S mar