Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1907-10-01
PRESENTS A
NEW PLAY
1.-THE AWAKENING" GIVEN FIRST
LOCAL PRESENTATION
miss NETHERsoLE ADMIRABLE
IN STRONG ROLE
Drama Has Numerous Structural De-
fects, but Contains One Big
Scene That Rises to
Lofty Height
BY sIDLE LAWRENCE

Paul Hervieu's drama of THE Awdk.
ening" was presented on the Mason
stage last night for the first time in Los
Angeles. The play served to reintroduce
to local audience Miss Olga Nethersole
and her company. Its central figure is
a woman who is persuaded, almost
against her will, into making an assig-
nation; who is saved from disgrace by
a trick and who comes to realize in the
end that her duty to her husband and
child is finer thing than her passion
for her lover. There are big moments
in the play, notably in the scene between
mother and daughter in the last act,
than which there are few things finer in
contemporary drama; but there are also
passages wherein M. Hervieu's work
descends perilously near to melodrama,
If it does not actually cross the border
line.
The theme of the drama Is tense,
strong, of tinquestioned import. In its
development, however, there are fire.
quept changes of key which sometimes
makes for dissonance. 1t is almost as
though the composition of a master mu-
stefan had been transposed and rear
ranged by the author of the latest popu-
lar song of the day.
First Act Is Preparatory
The first act of 1.-THE Awakening is
merely preparatory for what is to follow
1t is made up of much talk and little
action, and the audience Is relieved from
boredom only by the playwrights success
in arousing expectations of something bet
ter later along and by the admirable de-
tall for which, doubtless, our thanks
should be extended not to the author
alone but to the producer as well.
The second act is melodramatic, or near
it, but it presents the novel spectacle of
%t,,ar tOfo fafl fn
impelled thereto not by passion alone, but
by apprehension for the very life of the
man she loves. Hence 1t is that Therese
de Megee's transgression takes on an
assumption of self abnegation. She comes
to her lovers arms not primarily because
she would be there, but because her idea
of his peril should she not come Is more
terrible to her than the violation or her
duty.
AS thew embrace noise is heard in an
outer ROOM The prince lover seeks TO
discover its source, but is restrained by
the woman, a fear that is not for her
self but for him, expressed pitifully in
every word and action. He breaks away,
however there is a sound Of scuffing out
side, and-silence.
upon the door and calls pitifully upon
Prince Jean. Then comes to her man
of Jeans people and tells her that the
prince is dead, put-out of the way so that
his country might remain at peace, un-
harassed by attempts of either his father
or himself to regain their lost power.
Crafty the story is told and the woman
believes She is induced to return to her
home.
Son Confronts Father
After her departure the prince. still
struggling for breath, reappears and con-
yhn no
trick in an effort to induce his son to
abandon the woman he loves and to re-
turn home at the head Of revolutionary
forces bent upon restoration OF the
exiled dynasty. There is fierce recrim-
ination. and the prince finally PUSHES
from the house, bent only upon correct
ing the lie his fathers agent mad told to-
Therese.
n is in the third act, however, that
M Hervieu rises to his Hottest height,
and IN the scene between mother and
daughter to which I have already re-
ferred. Therese faints on her way home
and is brought to the house In an am
bulance. Arrived there, she finds her
husband greatly concerned at her long
absence, there ensues brief colloquy,
In which the husbands abiding love is
shown with sureness and with deli
cacv that relieves the situation from any
suggestion of bathos.
Then comes the husbands mother and
explains to Therese that IT Is necessary
she go to a dinner that same night If
her daughters happiness is to be pre-
served. The explanation is persuasive,
but the woman is physically and mentally
i'll, upon the verge of a complete ner-
yous breakdown, and she insists that 1t
is impossible for her to make the effort.
The Big Scene of the Play
The daughter enters. Prettily and in
confusion not unmixed with concern for
her mothers condition, she confesses her
love for young Roger de Farmont and
his love for her. Roger, she says, is to
be sent away and his only hope OF seeing
her again rests in an effort which ne
asks that the girls mother make, Iol-
lowing the dinner at his parents home,
to reconcile his family to the match by