Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-04-22


James Matthew Barrie played knavish
trick on his readers. who loved him with a
kind of personal affection such as authors
rarely win, when he fiouted them with the
grotesqUe ending of his last novel, Tommy
and aTizel." And now he has served his
play-goers in the same way that he served
his readers 1t was with brightest anticf-
patton that every one wholly influence or
money could get a first-night seat from the
Frohman management crowded into the
Comedy Theater on Thursday night to see
Mr.. Barries two new pieces Punch" and
Josephine 1t was reasonable to suppose
that this brilliant audience had assembled
to see two plays; but what they got was
two cartoons bearing the same relation to
dramatic art that newspaper cartoons bear
to q Royal Academy exhibition. In the
first we saw humble room, from the rear
window of which Punch and Judy show
was being given to an invisible crowd out
side The crowd h0oted and jeered, and
poor old Punch and Judy were broken
hearted to have the conclusion thrust upon
them that their style of entertainment was
outWorn. butcher boy entered in the
midst Of the sad scene, announcing that he
was the public" admitted that he had
laughed at Punch in the old days but said
that he was now bored, and that Punch and
Judy must move on. The premises, said
1.-The public had been let to the new man.
Whereupon Punch belabored the public
with his stick and killed him. But the
DutCneT boy remains scarcely had been
moved before George Bernard Shaw-red
whiskers and all (but smoking a cigar,
which the real Shaw doesn't do)-burst in
and took possession. Him, too. Punch
tried to kill but his stick merely broke in
two over the newcomers head. So Mr..
Punch and Mrs Judy hobbled out and
Shaw went to the window and bowed to
the cheering popuiace outside. There were
bright CLEANS of fun and imagination and
sentiment here and there, but these were
aside from the main point that an audience
asking for bread had received paper wad
Then followed the main piece OF the even
ing. with precisely the same result. Jose
phine' was a political cartoon IN three pam
els, which American audiences doubtless
never will see. for it deals entirely with
local politics Suppose, when the tariff con-
troversy was at It's hottest in the United
States the most popular. imaginative and
gifted OF American playwrights of the day
had taken ii into his head TO make a
drama out of the abstract facts of the sit
uation. with pretty girls to represent pro-
lection and tariff reform, and young men %
represent, say. Blaine, Cleveland and Nc
Kinley in ali except makeup, and with Tn
Gle Sam as the father of the young men!
Well, all one can say Is that IL the play
had been offered by any one less than a
Barrie no manager would have dreamed of
producing IL, and no audience could have
been found for 1t, except in political wig
wan. But that was exactly what Mr. Bar
RE did for England with Josephine"
In this. like others of Mr.. Barrie's recent
plays, the whole was considerably less than
the sum of its parts. Josephine abound
ed In really witty details, ingenuities bits
of the real dramatic stuff all sorts of Incl
dental delights that kept the audience from
being altogether indignant at the prank
played upon It. And the parts representing
or rather typifying-Chamberlain Lord
Rosebery, Arthur Balfour, Campbell Ban
herman. John Bull. the Irish party and free
trade and fair trade were taken by some
OF the brightest and ablest actors on the
English stage. Josephine" in particular,
as enacted by Dion Boucicault. and repre-
senting the Chamberlain ideals In the form
of an ambitious and masterfal old maid
who courts each of the boys In turn, was
no less than q masterpiece. thanks to the
ingenuity and hurnor with which the actor
burlesqued the methods OF the average lead
ing lady. Whatever real triumph there
was In the play belonged TO Bouctcault
rather than to Barrie