The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-01-06

Road to Yesterday is phantasy. quite impossible as . play of normal emo- tions, and dependent upon the dinicult writing out of an easily concocted scenario. Its nightmare half. the mid dls two acts, is romantic melodrana streaked with wit and spattered with humor. The actress chosen for the dreamer Is the wild-eyed and child voiced Minnie Duprse. and she behaves | in mid England scenes of 1905 like another bewildered Alice in Wonder land. She is confusedly conscious that she Is asleep. but she can't wake up, and slowly she believes that she has become the iong-ago predecessor of herself--a fair ladye of ye seventeenth century. grievously beset by . cruel lord, who kidnaps her to his castle and makes her . woeful bride. In her direst misadventurcs, she Is joyed by being an old-time heroine of a senti-
 mental romance, in which her compan- Ions have their souls set away back Into the bodies of the same time and place. Fun comes of contrasting the girls modern individuality with her far-away bygone environment, and the scheme of the play carries a travesty of ultra-romantic fiction, yet more ana more the nightmare gets earnest, until her yeoman lover. who has first along fallen short of her ideal of born gem tleman hero, rises grandiy to the oc- casion of rescuing her from her lordly abductor, and lies dead at her feel slain for love of her. Then she wakes up, and encounters him in visitor at the studio. This Is a whimsically ex- traordinary play. Will it live and prosper? How can tell when 1t IS but four days old?a It seemed iusty birth.
 The play which William Collier and Grant Stewart have written for Collier
 to star-act in is so inconsequentiai, dramatically, that 1t might be dismiss
 ed in a contemptuous paragraph; yet:
 Caught in the Rain" probably VIII
 bring in more money. by merely tick
 ling more people, than either or the
 brainy comedies which Richard Hard ing Davis and Augustus Thomas pro-
 yided for him. This farce happened Tn this way: Collier was playing across America on the route to Australia In
 his company was Grant Stewart, not
 much of an actor, but faciie writer of humorous sketches. In Denver they
 saw a girl caught by a sudden shower. She didn't mind the rain much, as an awning gave shelter, and she was
 duck of a girl anyway; nor did the dangerous lightning scare her, TOT
 wasn't she accustomed to eiectrical is
 lumination? but with illogical femtnity
 she was terrified by the harmless thun- der. A young man came along. Per-
 hans if was one of the actors, but prop abIy it was not, for he was inclined 10
 be bashful, and run away, when the rirl--spot-lit like a stage heroine by
 vivid flash of lightning, made an emo
 tionaI actress by deafening clap or thunder-seized upon the stranger ana implored him to save her.
 sThere 's the play we've been talking about said Collier to Stewart, or meppe
 if was stewart said 1t to Collier. TOT
 aro guessinr at the details. But there
 was the start and the title of Caught
 In the Rain" The incident Is set forth with street commotion hurried or halt
 cd by the shower, the natural pne- nomena. initiated finely, real water dripping from the front sky boroer' ano fbe encounter of Willie Collier ana Nanette Comstock taking place with humid illusion.
 The comedy which thus catches on m
 A rain is for the rest matter or yer hal snartness. Collier and stewart were born in the same period as DaV,s and Thomas, but not in the same world o9 dramatic genius. However. they face audiences year in and year out as the other two don't. and, like mono Ioeuists in vaudeville, they know now I,to get the laughs. So the acqualntance of the fellow and the girl runs on from | the meeting by chance to betrothal' with no particulars worth reading, put with a continuous entertainment pr nun. repartee and other fun or klnos which Collier can deliver with great AoI RrGAI facility. He delivers the Soods-4that is to say, himself; and they are or Kind which the public buys with all the eagerness of shoppers at a bargain sale.
 New York "society's" caprice of go-
 ing to one of the female minstrelsy
 shows at a cheap and smoky concert
 hall was a topic in my letter or three Sundays ago. The surprised company of muggers and chair-warmers, instead
 of moving on at the end of one week.
 as it did last season. stays indenntely
 where it is. This proves that our va
 riously smart sets are ready for A
 change in theatrical enjoyment, but not that a new departure will be made Tn q downward direction. for their incline IS
 inward rather But who and what
 will catch them on the rise? Joe
 w eber hopes to with Tne Masic
 Knight" and Dream City" He Is making a costly try for 1t. Victor Herbert is, calculate, the most money making music maker In America, as his orchestra is as prosperous as Sou
 sa's, his compositions sell as well Tn
 the stores, and this season he has halt A dozen scores in theatrical use to the March Kings one. So Herbert must
 have come high to Weber. It is in
 '.The Magic Knight that the value or Herbert is realized as a musical hunlor-
 ist and Weber may have bought
 ticket that will win the fashionable fad
 prize.
 Burlesoue of grand opera, has been common in negro minstrelsy, vaude- vile and extravaganza these fifty years and more, but seldom has 1t been wit
 ty. or contained other than crude fun
 The libretto of '"rhe Magic Knight" is A travesty of "Lohengrin," but the Hu-
 bert score is not made up of unas-
 simulated selections from Wagner's
 music but of what may be termed
 original plagiarism-a stealing Of notes and a forging of them into coun-
 terfeit currency-a succession or Keen
 droll. musical jokes. The oddity in
 this mockary of Wagner's is that in attempt to catch society" by its musi-
 cally cultured ears, and lead 1t back to the music hall which 1t had abandoned, the matter is rendered In genuinely grand operatic fashion. A prima donna of the first-class, Lillian Blauvelt of
 Covent Garden record in London and
 NEo+ronoIytan ODera House in New