The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-09-02
Theatrical Letter
BY FRA LIN FL

1et there IS touch or sing ularlty m the farce at the outset Jim Wcath-
 erby has an ultra pious wife. and by ly-
 ing to her about his evenings out, he gets to be called the good MT. Weath-
 erby, to distinguish him from his brother Dick, who is a truth teller, and therefore becomes known as the bad Mir. Weatherby. in farces of eonnubial me1dacity, the liar usually gets into difficulty right off; but here the sim cere husband loses his wife immcd-
 lately, while the hypocrite keeps his awhile. That Is all that can be said for the play. MT. Hawtrey is an agree able comedian.
 A second thoroughly English piece
 is. Lady Jim.v although the Harold
 Heaton who wrote it has made liv- ing in America some years as actor, artist and journalist The Lady Jim" dienne of the rd and smooth
 creamy and buttery type. Her whole some personality is utilized in Heaton's heroine--a rural gentleman. who goes to London to find out whether her neices suitor is good fellow. She gets into his bachellor apartments, and finds a supper table laid for two. with
 bunch of violets to snow that the expected guest is feminine He foists a woman servant on her as visiting aunt, but the trick is quickly exposed,
 
 quarters while he goes to placate his fiance. Criss-cross action fills the play with fun and the climax is mar
 riage for the woman with her antago- nists in the duel of wits.
 Two song and dance plays of Ameri- can make, "The Tourists and Marry
 ing Mary" are new in Broadway. One is in the familiar fashion, safe and sure; the other cuts a change of cloth
 into unusual shapes, thus taking
 risk. After have told you that the
 tourists who give title to the first named piece are a Yankee girl in Hin- dustan with a frisky governess, and Yankee fellow who follows her with an antic tutor, you should guess not only that the youngsters cut up amor Jus d. does under lax mentorage, but also that the governess gets into a srajah's
 harem, and the tutor is carried off by
 brigands. R. H. Burnside. the author. has been a stage director of so many musical farces that I4doubt if he could, If he tried, write a liberetto without brigands in 1t. And Gustave Korker has led orchestras and made tunes for Francis Wilson. Frank DanIels, Jeffer- son DtAngsles and DeWolff Hopper so
 many times that he would scarcely be abfes to compose a score without songs for comedian scared funny as a bo- gus oriental potentate.
 Although 'The Tourists" is as stale as that in subject, 1t is freshened in
 its activities. The abduction, for ex- ample is done by blindfolding the tutor who is Richard Golden, funny In the same waSs that he was in old Jed Prouty," but In far east instead of merely downeast guises-making him balance along the edge of an imaginary precipice, leap across an unreal chasm crawl through a fancied2 cavern, and all the while he is, being led around and around the dooryard of a tavern, to finally pay a ransom to his own pu- pill, who ernits the groans and shrisks of tortured captive, and at the same time talks for the bandit chief
 through @ megaphone
 The young lover and loverine from Massachusetts are played by Alfred Hickman, who was husband of Blanche Walsh with none but them selves and a clergyman knowing 1t | until a divorce let the secret out, and Julia Sanderson, an exquisitely pretty | girl brought forward from the chorus l so untrained that, when on the opening night she saw some real actresses beating her, she became so nervous that her voice gave out in song Then too, the machine that was to project
 her and others in an optical illusion,
 while she posed and sang behind the scenes, couldn't be made to work. Up-
 on her next appearance, she had wept the black off her eyelashes and plough
 ed furrows with tears through the red and white of her cheeks.
 The malleable nature of such shows as, 'tThe Tourists'zis shown in the fact
 that the. principal disturbing coinpe- titpr of lovely Miss Sandsrson was a Grace Larue, ewhom the management | came across just in time to put into the play. Her specialities were mimicry | and agile dancing. The role of Dews- l 1r .1..l N..1 ! in the morning, she was rehearsed in | the afternoon, and in the evening she missed cues ,collided with other per former, and got hit by the descending curtain, but made the best single sue
 cess of the whole show.
 The Mary of Marrying Mary" is Marie Cahill, and she controls, the
 show. too. It is one of her notions
 that "a new lot of fresh young girls | makes an appeal to more and better people than the ilI-famed beauties ot | the Thaw- hite class do. Al the first | look you see a stageful of young l strangers to the Tenderloin, who sug- | gest sweet girl graduates at a school commencement rather than ballet chorus. Msss Cahill has dressed them | in maidenly simplicity, and keeps them | W all- hammered. And it is a fact that no Thaw or White is permitted to take 1 them away from the stage door. They | | not go to any notorious midnight res | taurant-which counts for good morals and good business. .ttle'
 The Mary of the play is so marry ing that she has divorced three nus bands, when we first know her, and | pretty soon she takes a fourth. The l third is Willie, whose other name, but | not lis fame, is Drinkwater. An, says | Mary on meeting him, there's Willie | on his way to the Zoo" But he halts | to join numbers one and two in a song | ab put three men in a boat with one 1 wife All the music. as well as the | dancing. is Interpolation, as the Iibret-
 to is Edwin Milton Roy1e's farce, My l Wife's Husband" which Nat Goodwin
 used awhile. The verses are by Ben jamIn Hapgood Burt. the tunes by Sil-
 vio Hein, and in giving the job to them | Miss Cahill brought in new. young tal l ent. The most infectious of Hein's airs
 is the finale of an act A usual sort of l powerful voice of Eugene CoWles along with that of William Court l leigh, hitherto heard only in legIti-
 mate acting. and the highly trained one l of Miss Cahill Then. unexpectedly, Marrying Mary. who Is about to marry | some more, turns q casual reference to
 the cooihg of doves into a~reason for
 an air that cojos and twitters, The dance that goes with it has a cake
 walk gait. and it incites the bridal
 couple to a syncopated frolic, which is
 joined by the minister, the former hus-
 bands the bridesmaids, the ushers and | the guests in a showy procession.
 | Composer Hein came out of small | clerkship in a law office. Rhymester
 But was merely one in the sextette c,
 a comic opera, but some of. his songs