The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-10-27


I dents to proceed from the afternoon OF
one day through starry hlSht TO thc
gray bleak dawn of the next The
nIace iS on that Leucadian promontory
| famous through twenty-five centuries
as Inc height from which Sappho fune
| herself TO death in the Aegean sea. The
picture is beautiful. But the drama
| lacks that simplicity of theme and
| dsef;on which is the most salient quail
" of the writers whom the earnest
young American strives to emulate. He
shows the Greek poetess' first view of
! Phaon, here presented as a slave. and
| her immediate passion for him; pro-
eeeds swiftly with his capituIation TO
her; thence passes to his accidental
killing of his child. resulting in his re-
| union with its grief stricken mother.
and his desertion of Sappho: and con-
cludes with her leap into the sea This
simple, II hardly exalted tale, is COM
piicated with a mesh of irrelevant and
commonplace detail, and obscured bv
ponderous verse. The words are a dead
weight that drag down an admired ac-
tress from a high place which she has
mounted TO- 1t would be difficult to
engage q company competent bv
training to act this tragedy in the ex-
| alted manner necessary to uDlift It
from commonplace. 1t requires varie-
| " and simplicity of elocution, and the
power TO create and maintain a de
lneanor of alOofness. Bertha Kalich
mas none Of these qualities in the ex-
IRENE degree here required of her; nor
do any of her associates indicate the
possession of them.
x x X
Mrs. Kalich is a lovely figure as she
energies, wreathed in ropes of violets,
between two massive Doric pillars.
rising amidst the tangled branches of
olive trees against the deep blue sky
and deeper blue eXpanse of the Aegean
sea, which lashes against the shore
throughout the play. SaphO is a beau
tiful sight as embodied by Mrs. Kalich.
Mr.. Mackaye gives to her as her first
words those lines that have come down
through the ages from her to us. AL
caeus, gazing at her weaving the vio-
let's into a chain, says to her, i'm the
words Of his ode. still partially pre-
served:
"Violet-weaving. pure, sweet-minded
Sappho.
wish TO say somewhat, but shame
hinders me-"
WhereupOn, answering in the words
Of her ode, she says:
''Hadst thou had desire of aught good
or fair,
Shame would not have touched thine
eyes,
But thou wOuldst have spoken thereof
openly
1t would be impossible without hav-
ing read Mr.. Mackaye's play, to speak
of it with complete authority 1t is
difficult to separate the shortcomings
of the actor and of the dramatist in a
play with which one is not familiar. 1t
= ClITnlzv fha 70,
they said could not be understood.
Yet. how can we be sure, under such
circumstances, that what they had to
say was worth the saying? They said
It in heavy blank verse, made weight
Ter by almost uninterrupted adherence
TO the ten-syllable line, and rarely il
lumined by a CLEAN Of imaginative
idea. Indeed, venture to say that in
the best of the romantic dramas. of
far less pretentious claims, one may
find as much of literature" as in this
massive composition by Mackaye
The new musical comedy is THE
Hoyden" and it might as well be
named Elsie Janis" as Elsie is all the
soul of it and much of the body. Elsie.
as you know, Is a mimic next below
Cecilia LOTUS in ability to initiate
other players mannerisms. She be-
gan under sixteen, and the Gerry so
ciety kept her out of New York till
she was of legal state age Then she
broke forth with startling portraitures
of Sam Bernard, Eddie Foy, George
Cohen, Richard earle, Fay Temple
ton, Ethel Barrymore and Anna Held.
She is still under twenty in years and
under ten in behavior In theatres of
the top grade flowers are not permit
ted to be passed over the footlights.
but an exception was made on the
opening night of 1.-THE Hoyden," and
five hundred dollars worth of posies,
at an ineXpert estimate, were handed
over to Elsie. Who paid for them?
How do I know? But 1 can inform you
that she received them with childish
glee, running to and fro at the stages
edge to reach them, clapping her
hands, pattering her feet, and making
joyful CALCULATIONS. The audiences
spirits rose with hers, and the floral
part of the performance went well. But
Elsie is a big girl now, and / wonder
how much longer II will be before her
Juvenile exuberance will be regarded
as adult assurance.
x x
However, Elsie Janis seems to have
discerned the need that she shall be
come an actress. In this musical play,
transferred for her from the French,
she is the tomboy sister of an English
girl in betrothal trouble. and goes ad-
venturOusly to wicked Dieppe TO save
her from sorrow. 1t is a curious truth
that the best mipics of good actors are
apt to be bad Actors. Cecilia Lotus
is worth $500 to 81, coo week in vaude-
vile and not half as much in drama.
Elsie maintains her amusing value by
having her mimicry put into a COM
edy, in which she sings and dances
also, and she freshens her masculine
delineations by wearing a boys jaunty
suit for them, and making new selec-
tons OF passages TO speak.
x X x
The ingenuity of some of the de-
vices for extravaganza foolery is
shown in a new double sextet that ex-