The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-10-06
LINE ON ROYLE'S NEW PLAY
Continued from PAGE 8.

joke is turned on him. and on the au-
dience. too, for a maid servant mod
estly clad in a black frock, with white
Greetings of linen purity at her neck
and wrists, is disclosed when the
screen is removed. 1t is this servant.
already Minds misused sweetheart
who develops into the man-killing
Body, TO endanger even the sfnless
Soul. Now, how can Mr.. Royle rea-
sonably expect the generally frivolous
theatrical public to rise with him from
a students carouse with show girls to
the religious heights of a morality
play?
The dismembered firm of Weber &
Fields stays so. and each former part
ner annually sets going a show of his
own. Lew Fields gets into town ahead
this season with 1.-The Girl Behind the
Counter" and he has Connie Ediss for
a new stage companion. Not otherwise
is Connie new. She is fat as butter in
big round tub. fair as shampoos with
peroxide can bleach her hair, or a
swabbing with blonde stain can make
her complexion. and as close to forty
as all the known Juvenilizing tricks of
toilet can keep her. Connie is such a
London favorite that / wouldn't WON
der if Fields pays her eight hundred a
week to come over here. Just as New
Workers have fostered May Irwin in
Yankee mirth, so have the Londoners
fOndly laughed at Connie in cOckney
jollity. l wonder If London would
welcome May as readily as New York
does Connie? don't think so. We are
quicker than they to appreciate an
alien humorist. A dozen years ago,
Connie was imported with 1.-THE Shop
Girl from London, where she was of
no particular account. She tickled us
nightly with a cockney song having
for its refrain: "a strawberry mark in
the middle of me back was all that 1
got from fawther." On going back
home she became popular, and is the
best paid actress in musical farce. She
is. now broader with A than before,
more reckless with H. and much ADLER
in action, with a vulgarian's song of
sudden wealth, each verse ending:
Now I have married a millionaire"
She plays Fields dominating wife-a
Mrs. Malaprop for twisted diction, a
Mrs. Caudle for voluble scolding, and
so unpleasant generally that, when
they've been married one year, ii feels
to the husband like fifty, and he wants
TO give a golden wedding to celebrate
a half century of wedlock. But l be-
gan to tell of our audiences readiness
to take a joke. That astonishes Con-
ME. She wears an extremely low bod
ice, and Fields says 1t is immodest.
"Eets awl roight. dOnchy know" she
says, in broad cOckney, "bein' copied
precisely from the plate"
WELL Fields retorts, that plate
was over-eXposed."
At a rehearsal, Connie wanted a
word added for her to specify that the
plate she meant was a fashion plate,
and another for Fields to make il clear
that the plate he meant was a photo
graphic plate; ''for If we don't. the joke
won't go over the footlights.''
Four English Journeymen farce !
smiths made THE Girl Behind the !
Counter" and two American joke and |
tune thinkers, Edgar Smith and Julian |
Mitchell. have sawed and hammered ii !
into shape for Broadway's keener sense |
OF humor than the Strands. The first |
half of the show is in a department |
store, with a soda counter at one side |
a flower counter at the other, pivotal |
storm doors at the back, stairways |
leading to a mezzanine floor, and all /
these sections are kept in commotion /
by salesgirls, cashgirls and customers,
who vivify and beautify with songs /
and dances the processes of shopping.
Connie Ediss is there to buy things I
for a grandiose reception, and Lew
Fields to curtail her extravagances.