The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-12-01
NEW PLAYS SEEN ON BROADWAY


New York. Nov. 2s-Seld0m indeed
does one week bring two plays so near
to the extremes of safety and danger
as "O'NeiIl of Derry" the Irish drama
made for Chauncey Olcott, and The
Toymaker of Nuremberg, the most
daringly peculiar comedy since feuer
Pan" II is written in such naive
spirit Of unsophistication. so nearly de-
void of common sense, so utter IN the
childishness of it's sentiment. that
s-CharIes Frohman deserves a courage
medal for presenting it in cynical
broadway. 'sPeter Pan" had the pres
tige of ]. NJ Barrie and Maud Adams
TO authorize it's whimsical infantility.
The new play is from Austin Strong
generally unknown pen. and its central
actor is W. j. Ferguson, noted ever so
long as an expert in crisply serio-comic
characterization, but no charmer of the
senses, vet here assigned to the role
of a man who shows sixty years in his
face, while neither his mind nor his
heart gives out sign of having grown
up above ten.
For a quarter of an hour "The Toy
maker of Nuremburg' is like the gar
sden scene in Romeo and Juliet" with
q boy and a girl giving their love to
each other over a garden wall The
remainder of the first act resembles
The Cricket on the Hearth" and more,
too, Strong's toymaker of Nuremburg
being still more guileiessly affection
ate than Dickens toymaker of London.
This sweet. silly old fellow is the IA
thei of the new Romeo. his employer
daughter is the new Juliet. and when
the action passes along TO a resem-
blance Of Dickens the new Caleb Plum
mer is discharged because he won't
turn from the making of the dolls he
loves to the Teddy bears he despises.
The toymaker refuses to adapt him
self to the ROOseveltian shift from dolls
TO Teddy bears. He regards his doIlies
as fit creatures for children to love, but
as to petting ugly beasties why. he is
no such nature-faker as to counter
ance ii. His gentle obduracy brings on
money stringency, and the old OPP
timist is gloomed TO pathetic pessi-
mism. Strong's diction is as plain as a
single-syllable primer. the plot as SIM
pie as nursery tale, the construction
no more studied than a pile of baby
building blocks and the action not less
naive than that Of the dolls The all
knowers i'm the initial audience were
puzzled at first by the aTtlessness, and
tried for awhile TO construe it as an
1bsenian problem; next, they were a
iANNAC AiGAAntu 10 uASQdlfl IL. out soon
they yielded to its charm.
Finally, an automobiles honk broke
the spell, and they heard the stopping
of motor car. A door was flung open,
and into the quaint old toy shop
through the window of which the face
of Nuremburg's famous clock was Wis
ible-strode siX-fOOt man, in the garb
of a sporting mOtOrist. He was long
absent elder son. He caught up his
mother in his arms, Rugged her. kissed
her, and cried out vociferously: "Tm
your little boy. mamma-your little
baby boyP' No one in the theatre
laughed. There was the applause of
approval, but not so much as a litter
of derision. Author Strong, however,
Cor it may have been Frohman, as he
is said to have been himself the discOv-
erer of this play of unique pleasure),
fixed the limit of adult juvenility at a
dozen repetitions of mamma" by the
returned siX-footer, and didn't let him
call his father papa" So the merri-
ment didn't come until il was meant
TO, which was when the big fellow de-
clared that he had returned from
America enriched by making and SELL
ing Teddy bears. That stopped the
bankrupt auction sale of the toymak-