The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-09-29
Virginius Makes Failure in New York
BY FRANKLIN FYLEs.

to some ones remarkably close imita-
ton of the trageGian's frenzied speech
accompanying Virginius strangulation
of Appius. Thereby 1 found two rea-
sons for O'Neill's curtailment Of the
scene. He knows his lack of the For
rest-McCullough power of lungs, and
he believes that, anyway, New York
ers of today would deem such ranting
ridiculous. To sum up BrOadway's dis
respect for ''virginius," it comes of the
stages shift from artificiality to natu-
ralness. We still admire such of
Shakespeare's plays as are works of
genius, but not Knowles verse that is
not poetry.
But if New York won't admire the
theatricism of Knowles old-style "Vir-
ginius." why doesn't it get enthusiastic
over the liberalism of Ibsen? We have
this week the first other than merely
occasional performance of THE Mas
ter Builder" and it causes no agita-
ton. One might have taken the first
performance for an intense though sub
dued session of the international peace
conference at The Hague. There were
Russian actress and g Norwegian &C
tor; then, too, there was an English
man and an Irish-American from
BROOKLYN who had never acted in his
native land till then. This was an oc-
casion for Ibsen faddists and Nazimova
adulators. ALA Nazimova is on the
top wave of fervid favor. To the ultra
fashionable, and those intense folk
who live in the atmosphere of studios
and Beethoven haze, she can do no
wrong. 1t seems more interesting to
watch with impatient eyes just what
she did do, and let 1.-THE Master Build
err drag along in it's way, untouched
and unfathOmed. Mr.. Ibsen doubtless
knew what he meant in this flux of
symbolism but Mr.. Ibsen is dead and
the key to the puzzle was lost with
him.
Peter Daley used to ask a riddle to
which the obvious answer was IAN
ostrich" but that the question said the
creature "barked like a dog" Peter
explained that he put in the part about
barking like a dog ''just to make the
riddle harder to guess" Any of us can
see the symbolism of Mrs. Solness'
brooding over the loss of her mine
lovely dolls,' in Colness' hesitant eff
forts to build a grand home with a
tower on ii, and in Hilda's exultation
in his mounting of the steeple, from
which he falls to death; but some of
the befogging matter seems, upon due
consideration. to have been put in
"just to make the riddle harder to
guess"
Mrs. Nazimova gave an uncommonly
good performance in THE Master
Builder two years ago; that of last
Monday night might be called positive
! ly bad. Keen intelligence, the fine
shades of expression, the infinite sub
| tlety of highly developed art in acting,
were in both; but the first was in Rus
sian. while this was in English. None
of the Russian woman's English is
plain, and some of il is unintelligible.
| Quite a third of all she said escaped
me; much I could not hear, more I
could not understand. Her remarkable
/ facial expression and illuminative
play of gesture helped me to recall the
matter.
X X
A plea for a hearing on the New
York stage is no longer listened TO
with ears cooked favorably, because it
is made with a foreign accent. 1t used
to seem TO some of US that Modjeska
oil w