Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-09-10
7 HE T H EAT E R.
The Columbia.

Fernando sliscu. identified with Mrs.
Fishes \ Shattan Theater Company for
many seas y. won a personal and artistic
triumph at the Columbia Theater last
night, when she opened the season with
Libin's drama, Ruth" rearranged from
the Ilddish by w. A. Hurvey of Columbia
University. The play gave Miss Eliscu an
admirable vehicle for the exercise of her
emotional powers, though it was not
wholly satisfactory from the conventional
dramatic standpoint.
The audience was dragged directly into
the midst of a sordid family squabbe, in
which father. mother and sister, living on
the earnings of the only son, object to his
continued association with wife who
erred before marriage and has committed
the objectionable sin of telling the truth to
her husband after six years of welded life.
Inc catastrophe is precipitated by social
lStlc coaiheaver, who wanders into the IL
brary, rebukes the daughter of the house
Tor reading de Maupassant, and discusses
the rights of man with the rest of the fam
iy, While the furnace, presumably. is
shrieking for more coal. The daughter who
feeds upon de Mauspa ssant, prepared by
her mental diet for any sort of foul sus-
picion, has constructed for herself a sup
posititious past for her sster-in-law, and
when she finds that reality jumps with
theory she is overjoyed, and proceeds to
character is the perfect type of the woman
whom other women call cat" and it Is
taken cleverly by Miss Eva Condor.
Edwin Arden. who knew his part. por-
trayed a husband who was dotingiy forgiv-
Ing, then weakly suspicious and accusing,
and afterward weepingly repentant. He
took the ungrateful part well, and did the
best work which he has performed since
his insouciant Lord Quex. Miss Alice But
ler whose mastery technique never dis
appoints, makes the most Of the part OF an
Irish servant, while Miss Jeffreys Lewis
subdues her exuberant joyousness to the
role of the mother of a Kilkenny cat fam
lily. These three Washington favorites were
all heartily greeted when they first stepped
OF the stage. George Bachus vacillated as
a vacitiating father, and little girl, Flor
ence Burns, helped out the action as a fifth
wheel to the plot.
William r. DAILY was the most amazing
figure on the stage He was the garrulous
furnace man. who adopted the whole fam
lily an audience for his leveling ideas,
and discoursed out Of season, upon his pay
and his sorrows.
Miss Eliscu was, Of course, the com
harding figure. AS in Marta Of the
Lowldnds," which Westinghouse remem-
Der with pleasure, she ran the gamut Of
human emotion, calm when her feelings
were under repression, but raging tlgress
when she reused to righteous anger
The character which she was called upon
to interpret was combination of the pro-
tagonists of A Dolls House and The
kreutzer Sonata" In the crisis of the
third act, like Nora Helmer. she leaves
her house, after having arraigned her hus-
band for his cruelty in Withholding conf
dence from her and adding to that affront
the basest of suspicious. 1t Is very tenn
pest of passion in which the woman whirls
from the stage. Whatever the faults of
the play, that scene swept the audience out
% itself and compensated for much 1t
was the dramatic climax. and the drama
might well have ended there, for the last
act is merely a sop thrown to the Cerberus
public that wants to know What hap
pened to her them"
The college don who demonstrated" the
play removed all his characters from their
original Yiddish surroundings and put them
in a presumable American library where
the clock pointed always to five minutes to
eight. By this he weakened the spirit Of
the drama.
But Miss Elsicu counts for much and
atones for many dramaturgical sins. Arith-
metic reels at the number of curtain calls
which she received, the audiences seal Of
approval upon her art.