The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-09-01
Theatrical Season Opens in New York
BY FRANKLIN FYLES.

dain his commonplace ways. She de-
mands that he behave as his ancestors
did hundreds of years ago. He won't
try to. So the unromantic sneeze ought
to be a convincing SneeZe. The rest
of Wilson's influenza is quite correct,
and he takes so much hot whisky for
it that he goes to sleep booty, to dream
that his time is set back four centu
ries The members of his house party,
especially a rich Jew, an assertive
Irishman and an unctuous bishop, who
conspire to get his sweetheart away
from him, reappear in his vision I'M
der long obsolete conditiOns-the Jew
as a tortured hereto whose life the
bishop demands, the Irishman as a
stalwart foe in love and war-and,
knowing Wilson as you do, you may
imagine how ludicrous he is in a bur-
lesque of chivalry. A friend next me,
who had seen the play in London, said
that Wilson was funnier in the part
than a James WEIGH had been over
there. The climax of his dream, the
putting on of a too big suit of armOr,
to fight a knight towering above him.
and his throwing of it off to vanquish
his antagonist in a modern wrestling
bout, is thoroughly Wilsonian in panto-
mimic clowning. When he wakes his
guests find him rolling and tumbling
on the floor in conflict with an empty
set Of armOr that has stood in a corner
of his room.
The native melodram4 of the week is
one of cowboys and Indians. We have
had so many hundreds of them, from
ARIZONA" to THE Squaw Man." at
high prices, and from Buffalo Bill to
THE King of the BuffalOes," at low
I,oV T7r,TN
any kind of an audience would stand
one more without rioting in revolt Yet
along comes The Roundup" and two
dollar people fill next to the largest
parquet in Broadway not only, but
or the opening night they helped the
gallery to make as much nOise-if not
as loud-Over gunpOwder scene as
had been made on the stage during the
act of especial turbulence. The pande-
moniac facilities were with the actors.
because they had a machine gun to
fire fusillades. while the spectators
could but yell and clap hands. The
author like many another, wrote out
directions for realistic battle between
Indians and United States troopers;
but, in his extremely exceptional case,
enough money has been used for rare
stagecraft to show all that his mag
nation conjured up The curtains rise
exposes a place of high rocks and deep
chasms. From away up at one side,
thirty hOrse-backed Indians, who seem
like a hundred as they ride their bron-
chos along a pathway zigza gging down
the face of a precipice, cross the bot
tom of a gorge and pass out of sight
among the boulders. Presently, their
scouts perceive and fire on two white
men in this death valley. The whites
defend themselves bravely, but the
reds Outnumber them, and they seem
sure of destruction, when soldiers ap-
pear on the cliff, and a battle, with a
picture of carnage at the end of il, is
the most rOusing achievement in mar
tial make-believe that have ever seen.
That is putting praise pretty strong
But the most money buys the best art,
if judiciOusly expended, and in this
case, no matter how many thousands of
dollars have been lavisked, not one has
been wasted.
Have / no praise for the author of
"The Round-Up?" Surely, yes. And il
doesn't matter that he is only Edmund
Day, hitherto merely maker Of
sketches for his own use IN vaudeville.
If he had not written two acts to en-
gross the audience in the men whom
the Indians and the troopers fight over,
that third act of great ado on the stage
would amount to nothing in the audi
forum. A gatling gun can't shoot
emotion into the hearts of people intent
on getting their moneys worth and
their times worth. 1t would be all
night with Day, and no bright dawn
of royalties if he didn't tell a throb-
bling love story. And that might not
win out If he didn't blend 1t with a
plenty of humOr. Nothing that I know
of is less readable than the plot of a.
play. Yet 1 must tell you that the two
white men whom the Indians would
massacre, IL the soldiers didn't stop
them, are lovers of one girl; and that
the winner of her goes to the bad lands
to find the loser, and give her I'D to
him; that the circumstances are such
as make even a sophisticated audience
wipe It's eyes for both fellows Days
luck equals his talent, and both are
good. Yet as likely as not he isn't quite
satisfied; for he has acted a rough but
not tough border sheriff in his vaude-
vile sketches, and, now that he has
written him into a long drama, it is
Maclyn Arbuckle who personates him
winningly.
More girls are kissed more times in
this weeks new farce of tuned antics,
THE Dairy Maids" than in any other
play that 1 remember. The kisses are
milkmaids on an English farm, and
the Hssers are visitors from the Brit
ish navy. The girls bring milk in pals
hanging from yOkes across their shout
ders, skim off the cream into pans.
churn it into butter, work that into