The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-09-16

curt contempt. and forestalls the downfall
81 this school before the ever increasing
demand for comic relief. II may be pointed
out that the art OF thu Bowery is necessarily
n popular art. and that not only Ia pufTeyors
OF melodrama. but in Shakespeare and
Caldoron Rs well. popular art has always
dealt in comic relief. Furthermore, this
comic relief OF Gordin's IL not only OK
oellent of its kind. but IL an integral part
Of the whole. without which the play would
be imperfect m a social study.
Mr.. Mitohell's adaptation is a work Of
discretion and finesse. Judging by a neoes-
sarily imperfect recollection Of the original
"a IL was produced some wears ago at the
Thalia. l should say that it has been ron
siderably shortened. II 30. the play has
gained condensity without any material
loss OF clearnese. either as 10 the story or
a. to its intellectual import. The pro-
duction lie deliciously atmospheric through
out--by comparison with me general nun
OF such pieoes. marvelloUsly so. One OF
the actors, Jacob Kaufman, is from the
Thalia company. Another, Jennie Reif-
Earth. Is from the local German stage.
Nine. Kalich appears at better advantage
than abe has hitherto don't in the English
language. Her speech has only a slight
accent, which helps rather than binders the
illusion. and her personality and tenn
permanent seem as II made for the part.
She 10 stately and simple, with a pallid.
gracious, distinguished beauty that goee far
TO justify her sobriquet OF the Yiddish
Duse. Her moments OF patient suffering
she infuses with an intensity OF sorrow
all the more poignant because IL Is nobly
self-restrained Her Anal outburst OF vio-
lence has the passion OF one of the furies,
and with it a beauty so austerely com
posed as to be almost sculptural. Whether
her power are Of any great variety may
be doubted; but in this play she rises to a
height that Is seldom equalled and, as il
seems to me, never surpassed.
The dramatic novelties Of the past week
are furnished by 'prentices in the drama
q young Englishman and a brace OF young
Americans. Both THE Dear Unfair Sex
In which Miss Ellis JefIreys returns to
America, and Clothes" in which Miss
Grace George again essays the metropolis.
reveal considerable vigor Of mind and
theatric dsxterity. and both are in any
real sense dramatically insignificant. And
in both the trouble Is that the author has
thought altogether about the stage and
the actor and not at all about life and men.
Some years ego WiIliam Archer was asked
by an aspiring novice how one might learn
to write for the theatre. The disciple Of
Ibsen and the champion Of Pinero answered.
by forgetting the stage and thinking Of life.
The advice is admirable-provided one
does not follow il; and no doubt the wise
man who offered it knew hat no one would
take 1t as seriously az all that comes TO.
Ibeen, as Mr.. Archer himself has pointed
out, learned his technique as a practical
manager, producing for the Scandinavian
public the plays OF Scribe and his school,
and .Pinero won his spurs rs an English
disciple Of the school of Scribe as continued
in a modified form by. Dumas hls and
Ibsen. Manifestly Mr.. Archer spoke in
the wisely humorous spirit of the mother
who counselled her charming daughter to
hang her clothes on a hickory limb and
not go near the water. The complete
playwright IL the man who has learned all
the tricks Of the stage and then forgotten
them. Mr.. lnglis Allen and Messrs. Hop
wood and Pollock are 30 deep in the strug-
gle with them that their fair manly forms
are submerged and the breath Of life bub-
bling out at their n~ostrils.
Mr.. Allen Is in the more piteous plight,
for the bag Of tricks he has rihed belong
to the days OF our fathers. obsolete on the
professional stage. and obsolescent even
on the amateur stage. where he very likely
learned them. Bernard Shaw once held
up W. s. Gilbert to r~eprobation because
he made 30 much theatric capital by using
feminine age and imbecility as a subject Of
ridicule. And Gilbert was the master
spirit Of his stage, who resorted to such
means only'when grsvelled for filter mer-
riment. Mr.. Allen has made his central
figure a veritable monster OF bysteria,
vanity and idocy. In the first act one is
supposed to laugh at the petty and gratui-
tous eXactions abe visits upon an adorinE
husband. In the second act her humor
takes her to the chambers of a bachelor,
engaged to be married, whom she supposes
to be a secret adorer Of her own, though
he obviously, and quite ~justihably, loathes
and hetests her-and we are supposed to
find delight in her simpering inanity.
No subject is filter for the writer Of
comedy than the foibles Of %tyrannical
beauty. But to enlist the sympatbies
Of an audience-to say nothing Of the de-
mands Of truth to n~ature-thc portrait
must convince Us as being real and essen
TALLY true. Moliere has given us a gallery
Of ridiculous women; but at the worst
his satire was intellectual, not mere
grotesquerie; he never represented them
as commanding the love Of a worthy man.:
and he never made them monsters. Miss
Jeffreys lent to this personage the charm
Of her personality and the distinction Of
her manner, and she interpreted every
mood of it with the most trenchant exacti-
tude and adroit ~finesse; but the result
was to make it only the more loathsome.
In the bachelor bedroom scene Mr.. Allen
progressed to a theatrical convention
which Is only obsolescent, and he treated II
with some freshness and considerable
skill. His chief triumph was in introducing
as c~ontributory complication an inebriated
silly ass, who became as the crux Of the
situation. The device was expert, the
character well drawn and the impersona-
ton by George Giddens d~eliciously comic.
Here for a moment was real life and humor,
or the semblance OF IL. But nothing could
lift from the play as a whole the incubus
OF that woman
The grab bag Of Messrs. Hopwood and
Pollock is Of more recent date. The heroine
Of Clothes" is a nearsilk version Of Lily
RnTf in The House Of Mirth " and her fate