Los Angeles herald., 1907-01-21
A NAvAJO's LOVE-
OPENS At BURBANK
SEDLEY BROWNS NEW PLAY
WELL RECEIVED
Many Curtain Calls and Speech by
the Author Are Features of the
Presentation-"sis Hopkins"
Back at the Grand


merits and demerlts of play, is called
upon to pass sane judgment upon one
which two large crowds enthusiastic
cally approve, yet which he knows is
not good dramatically, he Is in rather
an awkward position.
And his discontinue is increased
nightly when that play Is by man
whom he has known personally for
some years, and whose work. especial
~ as a stage director, he knows to
have been most excellent.
Shall he merely voice the feelings of
those who applaud vigorously but not
discriminatingly, or tell what his own
supposedly skilled knowledge demands?
Shall he ignore the calls of friendship.
or stick to his hard lines and the re-
qurements of his profession? Shall
he "straddle' and save the feelings
of everybody concerned by refusing
the opportunity to pass critical opin-
ion, or shall he live up to his purpose
in life and WELD his pen without re-
gard to any one, dipping 1t in caustic
If the play Is bad and in honeyed
phrase-pot if 1t be good?
Sedley Browns "A Navajo's Love"
received its first production on a local
stage at the Burbank yesterday, and
two immense houses went wild over
it, demanding as many as fourteen
curtain calls after the third act and
speech from the author as well. The
play has seen the light twice in the
east for brief periods, but has never
had other than stock production. In
this respect the author has been ham,
pered, for stock interpretations are not
always as intelligent and as thorough
as are those made by a picked and
trained company for road purposes.
1t is a drama with the educated Indian
and his love for a motif; in this case
hn IfNaI 10 hgI .1a
the girl In the end, whereas in most
of the similar dramas before the pub
lic-and there Is Il run on them just
now-he is a fullblood and he renounces
the girl and her love. In that it diff
fers, because it provides the happy
ending so dear to theatergoers
hearts.
The scheme of Mr.. Browns play is
novel only in that he sometimes en-
ploys rather unusual methods to work
out his story. His Indian is a stock
broker, not a college man; he. takes
the revenge of the street" rather than
of the tomahawk and the Scalping
knife He Furnishes his rival finally
by paying his debts, after bringing
him to the verge of ruin, instead of
turning him over to fate as is the
Indian habit. How true to life this
might be, perhaps Mr. Brown knows;
it doesn't quite measure up to the con-
ceptionS most of us have of the red
skin.
In his plot Mr.. Brown shows more
strength than he does in some of his
ways of working it out and OCCASION
ally he has flashes of rare poetic
beauty. He employs IL host of incl
dents and much talk; he doesn't al
ways make the purport of these clear,
nor does he show, except by Inference,
their bearing on his story. On the
other hand, at times he Is painfully
hx-fni 10 hoe will lot 4 I,a
Indian drunk in order to hurt Navajo's s
love for the girl and Navajo's Indian
servant discovers the perpetrator of
the deed; yet that is not explained
thereafter, nor is it made evident how
Navajo knows who played the scurvy
trick on him. Yet in the first act the
Indian displays pistol of peculiar
markings. whose story he tells, and
this pistol again figures in the climax
10 the third act, which purpose is per-
fectly plain from the first. These
Things should be corrected; they either
break the continuity of the drama, or
they make it puerile.
There is a wealth of material en-
ployed in the story, much of it super
tiuous. There is a plethora of words
and explanations and side issues which
should be heavily pruned. There are
several love stories, whose endings are
clear even in their beginnings, and
which never are unraveled. The play,
in a word, lacks cohesiveness; it's con-
struction does not SOW the skilled
stagecraft that the writer knows per-
sonally that Mr.. Brown possesses And
so much of the language is hackneyed
and ancient that it detracts much from
the enjoyment.
Yet there are elements of strength
in the play-very many of them.
Though it drags, it could be made TO
run rapidly and with strong interest.
The Indian is still new enough to the
stage in his civilized garb to provoke
attention, if properly handled; in his
character Of Navajo, Mr. Brown has a
strong role, which he could greatly de-
Veiop. His Indian is not entirely con-
vincing as now depicted; how much this
is the fault of the particular player is
a question that cannot be decided till
the part be seen in other hands. But
at the same time, the obvious situations
and the hackneyed episodes weaken the
inherency of the main plot and detract
Z from the ensemble effects. More work
on the part of Mr. Brown, with both
shears and fresh-dipped pen may do
much TO improve his property and make
ii a likable show. This seems all the
more evident after seeing how eagerly
his audience yesterday late it up
though Sunday Burbank audiences are
hardly to be accepted as a criterion
for sober and critical judgment.
In many respects, the characters in
the drama were well taken this is es-
pecially true of the women. Mary Van
Buren as Alice King is hardly the girl
not yet 21, but if one stretch ones inn
agnation beyond this fact, her imper-
sonation Is not great but satisfactory.
Maude Gilbert as the woman doctor,
Lillian Deane, is very happy. especially
in her comedy. Lillian Lamson Is
strong as the vilainess, Anna Court
land, and she shows much art, espec-
tally of repression, while Fay Banter
as the hoydenish Minnie lis darling.
The men as class do not measure up
to the women, quite. William Desmond
lacks the finesse to play the Indian, and
he misses the character because he is
always Desmond. This seems inerad-
cable in him; perhaps he should not be
too severely blamed, because he in
propria persona is just whom his ad-
mlrers care most for. ArIhur Rntladga