The evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1907-1908, 1907-09-24
MAKES SPLENDID IMPRESS
SION AT THE NEWARK.
Minnie Dupree and Her Associates Give
Excellent Performance-At the
other Playhouses.

Probably there are few people who, on
visiting a strange place or looking upon
a historic relic for the first time, have
not felt a curious sense of having r
ticipated in the same experience before.
In just a fieeting trick of memory is
flashed a vision of ones self in some
stirring situation in the identical en-
vironment. Yet all the time the con-
sciousness that, in ones present entity at
least, such a thing has never been, puz-
zles and confuses the mind 1t is a
strange and inexplicable occurrence, yet
so common thai Psychologists have often
commented upon ii.
1t is some such experience as this that
has suggested to Miss Beulah M. Dix
and Mrs. Evelyn G. Sutherland the theme
of THE Road to Yesterday" which be-
gan a weeks engagement at the Newark
Theatre last night. They have utiilzed
the idea to build a drama in wnich the
doctrine of reincarna;ion is not preached,
but lightly and inquiringly touched upon,
and utilized cleverly to satirize the pres
ent-day tendency to interpret history IN
the light of the highly-colored roman
tic fallacies persisted IN by the authors or
the Six Best Sellers and the swasn-
buckling melodramas popularized OF ola
by James K. Hackett, Kyrle Beliew' ct
ais.
So far as we know, Miss Dix and MIS-.
Sutherland are the first to employ the ioea
dramatically. There have been several
PLAYS of somewhat similar purport, put
none to bring into question the essential
originality of THE Road to Yesterday
when Knights Were Bold" In which
Francis Wilson is now playing In New
York, is, it is true, founded upon the same
general idea, but this Is undoubtedly a CO.
incidence merely. At any rate, The ROAD
to Yesterday" ontedates 1t by severai
months.
For this. that they have given us some
thing really new in theatrical conceptions,
the authors of 1.-THE Road to Yesterday
nave earned our gratitude supremely. But
they have done more. They have worked
out their theme with humor and magma
ton, with delicacy of poetic fancy, with
truth to the demands of reasonableness IN
character and situation, and with dramatic
picturesoueness and structural effective
ness. Right here let us pause to say that
any Newarker who fails to take The
Road to Yesterday along with the ex-
cellent company engaged in the enactment
of the play at the ewark Theatre, does
himself a wrong. That is, provided he mas
g regard for the best the theatre OF today
can offer. The Newark has nothing on its
lists this season better worth Seeing In
its combination of qualities that make for
pure enjoyment. 1t is an artistic work
and the finest kind Of entertainment at the
same time.
THE Road to Yesterday" is a hard road
to travel for the little American girl tired
out with a day of sightseeing In the his
toric places of London and with a dainty
head stuffed full of romantic notions about
the heroes and heroines of the days of
chivalry. In the ARTISTS studio, where a
gay company is gathered of a midsummer
eve, the talk falls upon the possibilities
of previous existence and the queer dreams
that one has at times of such things. IL
is on a midsummer eve, superstition has
1t. that ones dearest wish may be granted
by mysterious enchantment. and so Ell
speth Tyrell wishes she were back in the
days "of beauty aud chivairy, OF fair
women and brave men,
This is the first act. In the second ana
third acts Elspeth's wish is granted In a
dream. She and her companions are trans
poAted back to the time of Elizapethan
England. Elspeth becomes Lady Elizabeth
Tyrell, who has fled from her cruel
guardian, Lord S~trangevon, and become a
serving maid in the Red Swan Inn.
Kenelom Paulton, whose love for Eleanor
Leveson, through some strange mistrust
she has of him, has not prospered, is now
Lord S~trangevon, whose harshness of rule
Is to be expiated through long centuries
of afterlives. Reformado Jack is the Jack
Greatorex whom Elspeth has seen mas
querading in the first act in the garb of
the seventeenth century, and who is her
brave lover in the dream. Adrian Thomp-
kyns, the artist. who thought he must
have been Oliver Cromwell in some prior
existence, turns out to be the henpecked
husband of the shrewish Goody Phelps,
who keeps the inn. Malena Leveson is
Black Malena. the gypsy girl, and Norah,
the maid, is Mother Gillaw, the old bag