The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-05-05
Digest of "The Primrose Path"
BY FRANKLIN FYLEs,

New York. May s-There are two
reasons why the new play of The
Primrose Path may prosper, and two
why 1t may not. 1t has intensely emo
tional passages in a story OF girls
broken heart, and Margaret Wych-
erly 10 give ali possible poignancy TO
them. But the man in the case, al
though meant by the author to be re-
garded as worthy of ardent love, is
basely. cruelty faithless- That is one
of the adverse reasons, as audiences
can forgive a lover for any other
wrongdoing, from petty larceny TO
murder In the first degree, but not for
recreancy TO the girl who dotes on him
TO her own disaster. The play ends
woefully for the girl, yet not with such
q pftiful death as has carried many a
play like Camille" and East Lynne"
TO fearful success, but with her relin-
quishment of the recreant fellow, TO
let him marry an heiress happily. That
is the other reason for popular rejec-
tion of the work. If you have given
any study at all to the methods of ffc-
tion making, either in books or for the
stage, you can see readily why the fate
of this very wrong drama can't be fore
told.
Margaret WycherIy is an English ac-
tress, who came here several years ago
to introduce the whimsical plays OF
Yeats, the Irish Maeterlinck. The Bay
ard Veif1er who has written THE Prim-
rose Path" and put IL on the stage, Is
her husband. He has made her Joan,
an English rural lass, who 'the prim-
rose path of dalliance takes" with Ned,
an American artist, while he paints her
as a figure in the primrose path OF
Devon landscape. The path leads her
TO Paris with him, but not to paradise
of love. and almost to a DerditiOn of
hate This teaches no moral or relf-
gious lesson; its sets forth common
case of mating without marrying; and
its let's Margaret Wyeheriy, hitherto
in my fond fancy a Yeats angel of lit
erary enlightenment to the stage be-
come a quite mundane sinner. How
ever Margaret has to get living. and
the theatrical world surely owes her q
very good living, for she is an eXcep-
tiOnally fine actress, with all of Marga-
ret Anglin's emotional power q name
this other Margaret because the Mar
garets are remarkably similar in roles
OF passionl. and she has much more
than Anglin's technical facility. Pray
excuse an Oldish man-mind you,
don't say Old-for measuring by stand
ards of the past, but Clara Morris has
remained in my memory as the great
Anglin as the nearest present approach
10 her in crude, outbursting emotional
ism but when Margaret Wycherly-
Hold on. You can't understand the
situation without being told about 1t.
The first act of the play is in the
squalfd Paris lodgings of Ned and Joan
with Ned stricken by brain fever, and
Joan distracted how To get food and
medicine for him. He begs her weakly,
fcF a q
painter.
There is money In the street for any
woman young and pretty as you" says
their sordid landlord.
As the curtain falls Joan has madly
resolved to give life to Ned through the
shame OF her own. The next act shows
Ned a tremendously prosperous artist
in New York, Riding himself of the
now numbering Joan, and wooing a
wealthy belle Before finally yielding
to her rival, and going back to England
alone. Joan explodes her emotions by
telling Ned's f1ance. in his presence,
what she has not let him know before
that she saved his life in Paris. and
started him on his career of fame, not
with money received from her father,
as he believed. but with the wages OF
sin committed in desperate sacrifice for
his sake In this outbreak Margaret
x X X
The brothers Russell. after personal
ing Irish servant girls full quarter OF
q century, first in a vaudeville sketch
ana later in long plays, were suddenly
condemned by several Irish societies
of this city as insOlent caricaturists
and when they did not heed an order to
desist they were hooted and pelted of
the stage. The more grotesque jim
81 lnH
the ice man has camel" and Take the
COW out of the hammock" was the es-
pecial object of attack. He had been
so devoted to his art that, in his vocal
intensities he brought on chronic bron-
chitis. and had returned to the stage
after a recuperative vacation when the
storm broke upon him. He tried to
plead that ne was himself an lrishman
and meant no offense, but arguments
don't count much against potatoes and
onions. and it is no use at all to talk
hack at rotten eggs. The Russells had
10 quit the stage.
Therefore. when | saw It printed that
the Russell Brothers would appear in a
new play entitled THE Hired Girls
Millions l went to far corner of the
town to see what they would do TO re-
gain favor and avoid ill-will The play
was one OF those conglOmerates OF
meIodrama. farce and eXtravag anza
that are numerous in the cheaper the
aires Obscured, in is violence and
and nonsense was a story that two no.
tel porters We're heirs to millions, but
had been defrauded OF them by gang
of villains. The Russells acted those
two porters just for two or three min
,Ites. and then went into feminine dis
euises, one after another, TO circumvent
the scoundrelism. They began what
oId-tiners called ''protean versatile
w. as two Yankee women guests of the
hotel: then they were a German frau
lein and a Scotch lassie, singing and
dancing: next Jimmie became a French
actress, while John was an Italian; and
50 there had been presentations in five
different nationalitieS before Jimmie got
into his familiar guise of an Irish SER
want girl with John as his chum of the
kitchen. If representatives of those ma
tionalities I'm the audience didn't get
angry. how could an Irishman's wrath
rise? Moreover, Jimmie's face WASH
PAINTED comically, as it used to be, but
was left in its natural ugliness; and ne
didn't exaggerate the manners of the
women of the kitchen, but delivered 6
line of humcr that was quite within the
,ye.e,g1 ,1a Oh, 0ff ar7r af ion